Devil, Tower, Star
by I'm All Teeth
Summary: Hermione would do almost anything to win the war against Voldemort, but after reading a book confiscated from the Malfoy estate, she begins to see that there is a price to pay for the magical and brutal help that she receives. Draco Malfoy, proper heir to the terrible magic and badly broken by war himself, is the only one who seems to have any idea of what is haunting her.
1. The Cleverest Witch

**A/N: I don't own Harry Potter. Obviously. **

**Really quick: This isn't meant to be a war story. There's a lot of war in it, but that's not the meat of it, I don't think (I've got it about 85% completely written and am editing the chapters as I go). **

**Let me know if you find typos/grammar/plot errors. Comments are delightful. **

**Does anyone want to beta this thing? **

**Rated M for torture and sexy stuff MUCH LATER. I'll throw up a TW if anything gets graphic in a chapter. ****If you are interested in the story, but are not comfortable with reading these things, send me a message or leave a comment and I will send you an abridged version of the chapter.**

**Devil, Tower, Star  
>Chapter 1 - The Cleverest Witch<strong>

"I will not let her speak because I love her, and when you love someone, you do not make them tell war stories. A war story is a black space. On the one side is before and on the other side is after, and what is inside belongs only to the dead."

Catherynne M. Valente, Deathless

* * *

><p><strong>Monday, September 1st.<strong>

War is not an every-day event. At least not the way that they are doing it. Sometimes, she thinks war is a storm. A tornado or a hurricane because it is enormous and destructive, but also there-and-gone, sudden and quick and painful. Lightning, maybe. A landslide. Sometimes, war is a fire, because it destroys whatever it touches and, in life's great unfairness, chooses not to touch other things at all. She cannot fathom the destruction of it, most of the time. She thinks about countless bodies piled to an uncaring sky and wood splintering across innumerable continents. War, it turns out, is nothing like it is in books. War doesn't communally and evenly destroy everything. Once, on a battlefield, she fell face first into a bush of perfect roses and she was the first one to either notice them or wreck them, despite the blood soaking the dirt around them. Nothing, save for her face crashing into them, damaged the roses in any way.

Hermione Granger is not unharmed. She is still technically a patient at St. Mungo's where she has been since her most recent in-battle fuck-up. They've decided- Kingsley and the others- that she is more a liability than a use in a fight and so she has been released with a keeper to the ministry where she is to go through dark objects to asses them for useful spells. She is putting her massive intellect to use, they tell her, and she says the words over and over again to herself as if they are a prayer. As if repetition will make her pride sting any less.

Brightest witch of her age and she is a panicked idiot in a fight.

The ministry has warehouses full of dark objects, and the auror holds the door open to one of them, motioning for her to go in first while he locks the door behind them. The room itself is massive and still it seems cluttered. There is jewelry she isn't allowed to touch with her bare hands and mirrors covered in thick, dark sheets. Boxes are piled on top of trunks, perilously perched on the tops of dressers and wardobes so tall she could not possibly reach the top of them if she stood on top of the auror's shoulders and stretched as high as she could. There are books stacked like towers in cities, categorized by where they came from and when: _Lestrange Estate, October, 1982. Thornwood Manor, July, 1990. Black Townhouse, October - December, 1985._

She decides to begin her research with the dark arts books, because reading about dark magic isn't as dangerous as touching things she doesn't yet understand. Maybe she'll read about something that will help her go through the rest of the magical objects in this room. She isn't sure she'll be allowed to take anything more dangerous than a bookmark back to St. Mungo's when her hour is up, anyway. Besides, reading is something that she has always done well, even when she can't do anything else.

She runs her fingers over a stack of spines, tracing titles and bindings to decide which one to read first when a dark red cover snags her interest and gives her pause. It is halfway down a stack labeled _Malfoy Manor_, _May 1995_. She does some mental math. Ceized from the Malfoy estate after Lucius Malfoy was sent to Azkaban when they battled in the department of mysteries, only a few floors below where she is standing now. She grins to herself as she imagines what any of those pureblooded bigots would say if they saw her muggleborn hands all over their precious books. As gently as she can, she pulls the book from the shelf.

The cover is the color of dark wine and reminds her of the Gryffindor common room. It is smooth, well-oiled leather and not so thick that she has difficulty pulling it out of the stack, but not so thin that it feels weightless in her hands. No, it is perfect, and it is where she will start. She puts it in her bag.

She has just enough time to collect three other books before her MLE-appointed keeper floos with her back to St. Mungo's where she is still staying until someone can figure out how to close the X-shaped gash across her back, even though she has championed for her own release, saying it hasn't hurt for days and the beds are needed for the really sick and injured, but no one listens.

* * *

><p><strong>Monday, September 1st. Night.<strong>

She still dreams about that battle- the one that's got her in the hospital while her friends are out there, fighting in her war. When she recalls it, though, it comes in fragments- like a shattered stained glass window with no light behind it. A spell catches her and she is sure that she has been cut in half, just split into pieces from the pain and she screams and Harry is there with her. His eyes, green like a cat's, wide and afraid, are the last things she sees before she passes out from the pain. She generally wakes up screaming and clawing at the agony shooting through her whole body.

This is, in fact, exactly what has just happened. The healer has just finished changing her bandages and bustled out. Hermione is waiting for the Dreamless Sleep potion to take effect, but she is fighting to stay awake without meaning to- she just can't seem to shut her brain off on command anymore.

She dreams about the battle same way that she dreams about Dumbledore's body, lifeless and broken under the tower last spring. Sometimes, she dreams about happy things, like Bill and Fleur's wedding, where she danced with Victor and with Ron until her feet ached and then fell asleep giggling with Ginny about the way Harry had stared at her all night long. From the blush on the younger girl's cheeks, Hermione suspected (and suspects still) that Harry stole a kiss from her that night, too, but she knows Ginny too well to try to pry. When she thinks about it, she is still surprised that this was the same night that Kingsley became minister of magic- Scrimgeour was caught unawares by a pack of death eaters and was killed by Voldemort himself. That was a month ago. Summer is ending. The days are getting shorter. Hermione Granger is stuck in a hospital bed, eyelids growing heavy, while a war is just starting all around the country.

* * *

><p><strong>Tuesday, September 2nd.<strong>

The healer finally leaves and so she pulls her bag off of the bedside table and rummages until she finds the book she has been wanting to read since she first picked it up this morning.

She examines the cover of the book first. This is always how she does it- for as long as she can remember, anyway- she runs her right index finger up the spine, turns the book in her hands, examining the front cover and then the back, inhaling deeply the smells of cut paper and ink.

This book is, as she first surmised, perfectly smooth red-stained leather. There is no title on the spine or front cover, and the only blemish on the front is a small constellation of what are probably freckles from the original animal. The corners are sharp, and so the book must not be very old. Either that, or it is very well preserved with a book-keeping spell that she really ought to learn. She flips the book into her left hand, wincing slightly as the shift in pressure upsets the scabbing along her spine where the spell remains unhealed. It is covered in several new salves that are supposed to help, but have so far only succeeded making the entire room stink.

The book's back cover is as red and perfect as the front cover, but there is a slight puckering- a flaw in the leather in the right corner and she squints at it. It looks like a bullseye, round, a dark circle and a slightly lighter halo around it. She runs her finger over it. It is raised slightly, like someone tried to flatten it out but was unsuccessful in completely ironing it out of the material. It looks familiar to her, although she can't place why, and her brain takes a moment to piece it together and she drops it onto the bed with a scream that she traps between her lips. It is a nipple. A round, flattened nipple, and she realizes with mounting horror that she has been running her hands lovingly up and down a dark book bound in human skin.

She wants, suddenly, to wash her hands and to never see this book again, but she learned days ago whenever she gets out of bed, the healer on duty is alerted and comes to see if she needs help, and so instead she just takes a deep breath and reminds herself that she has seen bodies before and maybe _not_ panicking this time will keep more bodies from piling up. She knew it was a dark book from the start. She shouldn't be surprised, or feel quite so betrayed by it. So she swallows her fear and picks the book up off of the bed, opens it and tries not to inhale deeply the scents of human-leather and old parchment and when she inhales anyway, she pretends that the scent of parchment isn't so comforting.

The title page is blank, and so is the second page save for five words written in a faded slanted script in the bottom right corner, so tiny that she squints and had to bring her face so close to the page that all she can smell is leather before she can read it.

_for wars you cannot lose._

She swallows tightly, but there is no magic in the words themselves and so she feels braver. All spells must be spoken, she knows, and so there is no harm in just reading.

She turns the page.

The third page is blank, but the fourth page is littered with a strange jumble of latin, greek and runes. She knows some of the words, but has to rummage in her bag for a self-inking quill, a fresh sheet of parchment, and her Advanced Runes dictionary. She runs the feather across her lips as she reads. She turns the page, jots down a translation, picks up her Runes dictionary, and continues well past dawn the next morning.

She stops, finally, shoving everything back into her bag and pretending to be asleep when she can hear the healer bustling next door with a dinnery tray. It isn't against the rules to read books in bed, and they can't even stop her from reading all night, but for some reason, she feels like she ought to keep the book a secret. It's only because it could have dangerous information in it, of course. That's the only reason.

By the next morning, she has read the entire book, cover to cover, and she is still confused. The pages were a mess of different handwritings, like the book was written by dozens of different people, littered with diagrams she couldn't puzzle out- well, except for one, which looked like a series of tetragrams inside of a circle and peppered with runes with the words IN YOUR BLOOD written underneath in what Hermione was willing to bet was dried, brown blood, although the shape itself was in black ink. But the entire book appeared to be just one, long spell. For what, Hermione didn't know. There were aspects of its wandwork that reminded her of the summoning spell she'd helped Harry with in fourth year, but also pieces of dozens of other spells she had learned over the years. Still, given the complicated shape with the disturbing inscription, she suspected that it was a very complicated dark curse. She wonders, briefly, if it were to make something like a horcrux, but no- it didn't call for any sacrifice beyond a bit of her own blood- and so it couldn't be so bad as that.

Suddenly, it dawns on her that she is absolutely exhausted and she falls back against her pillows with a sigh, completely unperturbed by the papers, quills, and books spread across her bed like a strange and jagged quilt.

_22 days, 20 hours, and 7 minutes._

* * *

><p><strong>Wednesday, September 3rd. <strong>

_22 days, 9 hours, 18 minutes._

She dreams of a dark shadow and, in her dream, she is reciting a spell perfectly, her mouth forming sounds she has never heard before.

"Miss Granger. Miss Granger."

Hermione jerks awake with a start to see her main healer gently moving her parchments and books off of her bed and onto the bedside table.

"Sorry," she mumbles, rubbing the back of her hand across her eyes to clear them. "Good morning."

"It's afternoon, Miss Granger," the healer says, and gives her a gentle smile.

"Oh," she says in reply, and then remembers, _oh yes,_ she was up all night. "Sorry," she repeats.

The healer laughs and begins to lower her blankets. Hermione, who knows that it is time to check on her injuries, is already rolling over. "I'm just sorry I had to wake you," the healer says. "It seemed like you were having a nice dream."

Hermione, who could not remember dreaming about anything at all, knits her brows in confusion, although it is impossible for the healer to see the expression now that Hermione is laying on her stomach. The healer lifts the edge of her hospital gown carefully to look at the curse-wound and, naturally doesn't notice her quizzical expression. So, Hermione vocalizes her confusion with, "what makes you say that?"

"You were talking in your sleep. Where did you learn Latin?"

She doesn't know how to answer because she doesn't know Latin, apart from what she learned when she was at Hogwarts, but it doesn't matter because the healer clicks her tongue and lifts Hermione's robe further up along her spine. The air is cold and she can feel goosepimples rising along the ridge of her exposed backbone and down the lengths of her legs.

"How does this feel Miss Granger?"

There are cool fingers pressed across the top of her back. "It twinges a bit," she says, "but it's really fine, actually." She turns her head, but all she can see is the lifted edge of her robe hanging between her vision and the rest of her body.

"It looks fine, too."

Hermione takes a moment to absorb this information. "What do you mean?" She asks, because she is too smart to believe that she is SUDDENLY BETTER, because even magic isn't good enough for curses like the one she took.

"I'll need to get Healer MacAulay in here to look at this."

* * *

><p><strong>Friday, September 5th. <strong>

_20 days, 13 hours, 47 minutes._

Hermione is released two days later, and she is feeling better than she has felt in months, even though she still isn't sleeping well. It's like there is a fire in her that she hasn't known since this all started, or even before that, if she thinks about it. She raises her chin like a queen as she walks out of St. Mungo's sandwiched between four Aurors she doesn't know and the flashing of cameras, journalists vying for the EXCLUSIVE STORY! from Hermione Granger- Harry Potter's brilliant (to quote the lying quill of Rita Skeeter) "On and Off Love Interest." One of the Aurors is Harry in Polyjuice potion, Hermione knows, because he is squeezing her fingers so tightly that she would worry they would break if she weren't feeling so strong right now. She stares ownership into the cameras and she is not afraid. Not of the flashing lights. Not of what the papers will write. Not of death eaters. Not of anything.

* * *

><p><strong>Tuesday, September 9th. <strong>

_16 days, 11 hours, 11 minutes._

She is out of the hospital for four days before the Weasleys will stop stuffing her with food and love and welcome comfort. On the fourth day, she and a new auror head back to the Ministry Warehouse. She returns all four books and takes five more with her to Grimmauld place, where she will be staying, at least for now. The three she read after the first weren't nearly as interesting. One was on a ghastly dark wizard in the sixteenth century who had mastered the art of turning people inside out before eventually turning his wand on himself, proving once and for all that one can turn oneself inside out. The spell was not included in the book, which she was thankful for because it made it that much less likely that the death eaters would know the spell. Another was just a litany of Malfoys through the Ages and after three chapters of "...and Cassius and Persephone Malfoy begot Abraxes Malfoy on the First of October in the year…" it had taken all of her willpower not to chuck it into the fireplace. The last book was a potions book and she had found several useful potions she has copied down onto separate parchment and passed to Kingsley, who has come to the burrow to join in the "Hermione is Out of Mungo's" banquet that Molly Weasley has prepared.

"This is good work, Hermione," Kingsley says, shuffling the pages in his hands. They are in one of the upstairs bedrooms, although Hermione isn't entirely sure which one it is. "Impressive."

"Thank you, sir," she replies, holding her head a little bit higher. There. She is worth it. She is helping. It doesn't matter that she isn't fighting. She is making her mark. She is helping the cause.

"Hermione, are you in here?" Ron opens the door without knocking, but has the decency to look sheepishly between Hermione and the Minister of Magic once he realizes that he is intruding. "Sorry," he mumbles, his ears turning red. "Should I go?"

"No, Ron." The parchment, Hermione realizes, has already been slipped out of sight and Kingsley runs a tired hand over his face. "Congratulations again on your recovery, Hermione." He claps her on the shoulder.

She lets out a long breath through her nose as Kingsley pushes past Ron, who waits for her in the doorway, still looking aprehensive. She and Ron trump down the stairs shoulder-to-shoulder, but not quite touching, and not speaking at all. They are not together now, and that is as much her doing as it is his. The "relationship," if it could even be called that, consisted of a string of awkward kisses and even awkwarder silences. They function best as friends. She is not bitter and she doesn't think he is, either, but they have only been just friends again for a month and a half and so they don't know where to draw the lines anymore. This is what happens, she supposes, when you spend two years half in love with your best friend only to realize that half in love is nowhere near close enough to fully in love. It felt too much like trying to kiss a brother.

But that was more than a month ago.

Ron floos with her to Grimmauld place and brings her trunk up to her room while she sits heavily in a seat by the fire. Harry isn't here now, and Ron doesn't seem to want to spend too much time in awkward silence with her, and so he excuses himself.

She curls in her newly claimed chair with a book and before long, Crookshanks hops into her lap to function as a warm weight wedged where her knees bend back to tuck her feet under herself. She is reading one of her new books, but her mind is drifting. She thinks about the spell in the first book again. She dreams about it every night now. This is, of course, only because it was such a disturbing thing to read, and now it is sitting like a bitter secret in her mouth, waiting to come out. It's not like she's keeping it a secret on purpose or anything- she has tried, at least once a day since she got out of St. Mungo's to tell Harry or even Ron about it, but whenever she brings it up, something urgent and pressing happens or someone calls or something bangs loudly in the other room and when he comes back to let her really start telling him, she cannot find the words to do so.

* * *

><p><strong>Wednesday, September 10th. <strong>

_15 days, 0 hours, 10 minutes._

Harry comes back bleeding and slumps at the kitchen table.

"It's nothing, Hermione," he calls as she races around the kitchen for _dittany, dittany it was just here_. "I'm really fine. Really."

But she is not hearing it. She holds his head back and droppers the foul smelling potion into the gash across his forehead and thanks whatever god or gods there might be that it is working! When she is done, the only scar on his face is the one that has always been there- the one that has marked him like a holy thumbprint for this war. She would erase this one, too, if she could.

"What happened?" She asks when she has cleared all the blood from the fireplace and door knobs and scrubbed wooden table.

"Malfoy."

The surprise must show on her face because Harry amends. "Lucius Malfoy.

Of course it was Lucius, Hermione was fool to even wonder. Draco Malfoy hasn't been seen for months- not since he helped Luna Lovegood and Hannah Abbott escape from the dungeons at Malfoy Manor in August. Not, of course, that it had done much good. Dolohov had caught up to them before they even reached the wood at the edge of the estate, but Hannah managed to get to the apparition point and back to a safe house. She choked out the story of the would-be escape around blood before dying in Hermione's shaking arms. In retrospect, Hermione isn't be too surprised- Luna and Hannah were never made for war. Malfoy was made of mercury- he slipped through the nails when she had him pinned for dissection, but he is dead now, and so maybe it doesn't matter if she never really figured him out.

"He sent a _sectumsempra_ at me. I blocked it, mostly." He grins sheepishly and ducks his head a bit.

She wrinkles her nose, "You need to be quicker with that, Harry. That's too close," she chides, even though they both know that she has no room to talk, given her track record.

Maybe this, though, is why he doesn't argue with her. He ducks his head again and runs his fingers through his hair. "Yeah, I know."

* * *

><p><strong>Wedesday, September 17th. <strong>

_8 days, 10 hours, 6 minutes._

Hermione sits in one place and chews her nails to the fingertips whenever Harry leaves the house. Every time he goes out, she is positive that this will be the last time she will see him, and it kills her to watch him go and to not be able to follow. As long as she has known Harry James Potter, she has followed him into danger. Now she _cannot_ follow him because she will be worse than useless to him in a fight- she will be just another thing for him to worry about when he should be trying to save himself.

To keep from going insane, she takes trips to and from the ministry to get new books to read and then she reads the books. In the last week, she has read more books about dark curses than were probably even in the library at Hogwarts. She has learned quite a lot and some of it has already proved to be useful. She is the smartest witch of her age, and her work reflects this.

Hermione Granger is cleverness and books, but she is also bravery and friendship- at least she likes to think that she is and she is sure that she is going mad waiting for Harry to come home. Every time he leaves, she _knows_ that he is going to die today and it will be Kingsley or McGonagall who will come back with a pale face and wide, sad eyes. She should get a medal for sitting in this old, angry house for a whole week- because that is how long she has actually been sitting in here or in a stuffy room at the ministry and she doesn't know the last time that she actually saw real sunlight or grass. No- when she thinks about it, she does: It was eight days ago, at the Burrow. The spell from that book is a song stuck in her head, and this is part of the reason she thinks she is going stir crazy. Maybe she should try to talk to Harry about this when he comes back.

What she actually says to Harry when he slumps through the front foor and flops onto the couch opposite her chair, boots and all, is: "I'm reading a very compelling book right now."

The book she is talking about is currently in her lap, closed around her finger to mark the page and to keep Harry from noticing that she's got a band-aid over her fingertip where she bit it down too far.

"Oh yeah?" he answers mechanically, "That's great, Hermione." Mud flakes off the tip of his boot and onto the carpet. Kreechur will have a fit when he gets back from Bill and Fleur's, where Harry has asked him to help the young couple settle in.

She raises her eyebrows. His eyes are closed. "It's about Flobberworms."

"Fascinating."

"And blast-ended-skrewt mating patterns."

"Wow."

"It gets very graphic."

"That's great, Hermione."

"And then Kingsley stopped by."

"Fascinating."

"He proposed."

"Wow."

"I joined a quidditch team today. I'm now the keeper for the Hollyhead Harpies."

Harry opens his eyes and looks toward her. "You were reading about the Harpies? Why?"

She rolls her eyes. "Oh, Harry, just go to bed if you're too tired to talk to me."

"Sorry," he rubs his eyes and when he pulls his hands away from his face, his glasses are crooked. "It's just been a long day."

She stands and Crookshanks jumps nimbly to the floor and pads out of the room. "Come one," she sighs, depositing her book on the chair and walking over to where Harry is still slumped. She straightens his glasses in a gesture that is so familiar she doesn't even notice that she is doing it. "I'll make us some tea and you can tell me all about what happened."

* * *

><p><strong>Friday, September 19th.<strong>

_6 days, 5 hours, 4 minutes._

It takes until Friday for her to finally snap and sneak out to a battle. Like most little wars fought in shadows and side streets, this fight was not planned and she only learns about it when Bill sends a patronus for Harry, asking for backup. She might not have apparated at all if Harry had been there, but he was out hunting horcruxes with Ron (something _else _she isn't allowed to do anymore- never mind that she knows more about camping than either of them), following a lead cobbled together from pilfered Death Eater memories and that strange connection Harry has with Voldemort.

She couldn't let a battle be lost because the boys were off fighting elsewhere and Harry would never forgive himself if people died and he wasn't there, so Hermione went instead. She turned on the spot and now she is in Godric's Hollow, whirling sideways as a firework of yellow light shoots past her ear close enough that she can smell her hair burning.

Her heart hammers like a war drum in her chest and she is not afraid. She was born for war and while still turning, she fires a _stupefy_ in the direction the _crucio_ came from, but there is something wicked railing in her brain. Why isn't she using harsher magic? There is a curse on her tongue that she knows will turn the war in her favor. It's right there on the back of her mouth like a fat toad, ready to leave. The other side will not hesitate to use unforgivables so why shouldn't she? And she has something even better than anything they might know.

But no- she is not like the death eaters. She is Hermione Granger, and wherever that thick line has been drawn between good and evil, she is firmly on one side and they are on the other. She does not use unforgivable curses because she is not a murderer or an unforgivable person. War is not a means to prove herself a wicked beast and she knows already what kind of monsters war creates and she will not be a casualty in a moral or physical sense. She will survive and she will do it with her hands clean.

They win the battle and she only knows when she finds herself, panting for breath, caked in sweat and dust from shattered sidewalks, surrounded by cloaked figures all bearing the lightning-blue phoenix on the right shoulder like a little neon "DONT CURSE ME" sign. She has never been left after a battle before and so this is her first real victory. She doesn't know what she was expecting- a whooping cheer, maybe, like after a quidditch match- but all that happens is Bill gives her a shallow nod and the six or so who haven't already left for home or been portkeyed to St. Mungo's all approach the dark bodies on the ground, looking for signs of life while Robards and Dawlish keep their wands trained on the shadows.

"Let's get moving," growls Dawlish, "They're already dead, but the Death Eaters might be back with backup any second."

"We don't know that they're all dead, sir," says a woman with short dark hair that Hermione hasn't seen before as the two of them turn a body over, but Dawlish either doesn't hear her or pretends not to.

This is the first dead body Hermione has touched since she closed Hannah's eyes in the kitchen of the safe house and she tries not to think about the iron tang of blood that smothered her then and is smothering her now.

"He's still alive!" The woman calls, raising wide eyes and looking desperately around, "Gawain! He's alive!"

"Then stop shouting at me and get him to the hospital, Bulstrode! What are you waiting for- a personalized invitation?" Dawlish's eyes roll toward her but his wand remains trained on the space between two dark and broken buildings. There is a vein bulging in his neck and spit flies when he speaks.

Gawain Robards gives her a nod of dismissal. The girl bites her lip and disapparates with a crack like a whip. Hermione stands, wipes the blood from her hands onto the thighs of her jeans, and moves to the next body.

There are seven more bodies to check. One is a Death Eater who gets ennervated, stunned again, and taken to Azkaban by Dawlish. This surprises Hermione. She'd never thought before about what they would do with the Death Eaters who are left behind after a battle, but it only makes sense, really, to go directly to prison. Do not pass go. Do not collect $200. Another death eater is taken to St. Mungo's. She recognizes him as Stan Shunpike, and he goes with a two-auror escort and no wand. Another order member is taken to St. Mungo's shortly thereafter. Hermione recognizes him, too. She met him once in a safe house in Scotland and she remembers him ruddy-faced with a big laugh. He is now bleeding fiercely from a gash that takes up most of his left sife and he is a light shade of blue, but still, miraculously, breathing. The other four bodies remaining are all dead- two Death Eaters Hermione doesn't really look at, Dedalus Diggle whose wrinkled face is frozen in a gash of pain or horror Hermione tries not to stare at for too long, and one body that is burned too badly to be identified as definitively human, let alone a known person, without the help of a good healer or coroner. Robards goes by portkey with all four bodies to the coroner's office of St. Mungo's. "I'll let them sort us out." he says before he leaves.

It is strange to think that Robards just had a portkey to a coroner on him, waiting to be activated, and Hermione wonders if he carries portkeys like that wherever he goes. She wonders how many bodies he's brought there himself.

"Thanks," Bill says, and suddenly Hermione realizes that they are the only two left, which is probably why no one is yelling for them to take cover or get out of there anymore.

"No problem," she answers and is proud of how light the words sound. It is perfectly dark- if anyone is home, they are not turning on lights- and so she doubts Bill can see how bad her hair is or that she is already crying.

"You were the one who stunned Rowle, yeah?" he asks. He is half-a-house away from her, so she doesn't know what he looks like, but he sounds tired. His voice is all gravel from shouting spells for twenty minutes.

Still, she is startled. "Yes. How did you know?"

"You were the only one here tonight who still casts stunners. Anyway, good work. Best get home now, yeah? Dawlish was right- I don't know why they haven't come back yet."

* * *

><p><strong>Sunday, September 21st. <strong>

_4 days, 6 hours, 24 minutes._

There is a battle on Sunday and this time, Harry and Hermione are asked for together. Pride lifts her bones and she holds her nose in the air all through the short argument she and Harry have over her attendance.

"You're not going, Hermione!" He hisses and there is power in his words, but she is not scared of him.

Instead, she draws herself up to her full height and jabs a finger into Harry's sternum. "Don't you dare tell me what to do, Harry James Potter. This is my war as much as it is yours and I will not sit around waiting for you to do all the fighting while I just read books all day."

"But reading is perfectly useful," he tries, shoving her finger away, but it is back in an instant.

"They. Called. Me. Too. Harry," she huffs, jamming her finger into his chest to punctuate every word. "It's not just for you."

He gives her a look that says he is contemplating tying her to a chair before he leaves.

"Don't try to do this alone, Harry," she tries instead, knitting her eyebrows, "Until the very end, right?"

They hold hands and Harry apparates them both. He is better at apparating to a fight than she is. Instead of sending them into the heart of battle, he takes them just past the edge of the fighting. They can hear the boom boom crash of spells snapping across trees but they cannot yet see the glow of the crossfire. It is suddenly just like last year and all she can smell is pine and magic but she is not afraid now like she was then. There is a curse pounding in her head as she reminds herself of Bill's words from Friday, but she is sure that Harry will never let her out of his sight again if she curses anyone seriously and her track record isn't so good that she's willing to gamble with people's lives, so when Henry says "Together?" and they start running towards the fray, she has a stunning spell on her tongue, and not something worse. She will always wonder if this was the right decision.

It is immedaitely obvious that this is a different kind of fight. There are more spells than she has seen fired in one place since school. The colors burn trails across her retinas and although she knows that it would be smart to be afraid, the curse on her tongue makes her braver than she should be. Miraculously, the curses always seem to just miss her and her stunners always find their mark. Because she is so busy succeeding, she doesn't realize that they are losing until someone behind her calls "Go back! Get to the apparition points!" and someone to her left screams. She turns her head just in time to see someone with red hair disappear under a terrific beast made entirely out of green fire and she is running towards the fire-beast without even thinking about it- eight names fumbling against her brain and she is running without looking where she is going and she is running without anything in her mind besides _I have to help Ihavetohelp Ihavetohelphelphelp_ and then she is yanked backwards with such force that she can feel the hairs tearing from her scalp in handfuls before she even hears herself scream, but there is a hand around her throat and a wand in her back and she is clawing and she is biting and there is a pull behind her navel and she screams Harry's name over and over again but it is dark and it is empty and she is alone and everything is so dark that it takes her breath away and, at last, she knows what fear is.


	2. In the Dark

**Chapter Two: In the Dark**

**a/n: **Still not a lot of Draco, but I promise that he will come into the story in next week's installment. On that note, I'm trying to get one chapter edited and posted per week. So if you don't see anything from me by next Wednesday, feel free to send me a (NICE! GENTLE!) reminder to update, because I've probably gotten swallowed by work (which is common) or disheartened by unpleasant messages I've gotten on this site (which is also common).

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><p><strong>Sunday, September 21st. 4 days, 6 hours, 54 minutes.<strong>

The first thing Hermione does after her captor leaves is fumble around blindly in the dark. She is hunting desperately across the cold, slimy stones for her wand. She is on her hands and knees and she whimpers quietly when her scraped shins slide across stone.

She doesn't remember the Death Eater taking her wand, but she distinctly remembers clawing at him with both hands with all of her strength and this means that she must have dropped it when the Death Eater grabbed her. She calls herself a witch and yet she cannot hang onto her own wand when it really counts.

A jagged sob rips through her chest and out of her mouth and she slams her fist against the stone floor. Her hand slicks off to one side and it is then that Hermione realizes two things: The first is that she must be underground, given the dankness and smell of rot on rocks around her. The second is that she is crying. Not in loud sobs, but the quiet snuffling tears that come with shaking shoulders and insurmountable fear. The stench of rot is so thick in the air that she can taste it on her tongue and she gags one, twice, and spits bile onto the floor.

"I'm sorry," she says out loud to no one in particular, but she knows in her head that she is speaking to Harry- the bravest boy she has ever known. He has walked into death more times than Hermione will ever be able to count, and he has been brave every time and here she is now and she is not as brave as Harry would be- she is afraid of what will become of her here. She is afraid of who will come for her and she is so, so afraid to be tortured to death, which she knows is going to happen. Her breath comes in shorter and shorter gasps and she only notices this when fireworks of color begin to explode in her eyes and her thoughts become blips and start-stops. Like Morse Code, which she used to know fluently.

She is panicking and she knows it. She is twelve again and she is wrapped in Devil's Snare and it is choking her out and _oh god she cannot breathe! She can't breathe. Can't can't can't._ But there is Ron's voice in her head, because it has always been Ron's voice that pulls her back into reality.

_HAVE YOU GONE MAD? _

No. Yes. Maybe. She doesn't know and why is Ron always _yelling at her_ even in her own imagination. She lets out a strangled, hysterical giggle at this thought, and this calms her somehow.

_ARE YOU A WITCH OR NOT? _Not without a wand. No, that's stupid. She was a witch before she got her wand and she is still a witch now. So, yes. Definitely yes. She is a witch. She is a witch because Harry and Ron were her first real friends, apart from her mum and dad. She is a witch because magic is better than being special or different or "academically talented" and because there is something utterly satisfying about knowing that she is capable of creation and destruction like in the books she read when she was little.

Like the stories, only so much better and worse at the same time. Better, because magic is in the details- the small breathtaking things that she still notices, like Professor Flitwick's fireworks or watching a snitch's wings unfurl like the petals on a flower on fast-forward. Worse, too, because she never read about people getting captured and imprisoned in dark cells when one of their best friends might have been on fire.

Oh, god, Ron! Thinking on it now, she is sure, _sure_ that it was Ron. No- she is not sure. She has no true evidence that it was even a Weasely. It could have been anyone and the Weasleys are not the only wizards and witches in England with red hair. There is, actually, a strangely high prevalence of magically-gifted gingers and she isn't really sure if that correlation necessarily implies anything, but the fact remains that it could have been anyone that was under that burning beast and they could still be fine.

She is manually slowing her breath now, counting to five before she exhales with a hand over her pounding heart like she is going to be able to contain it in her chest that way. It is working and she is feeling calmer now, but now that the adrenaline is leaving her, a resigned fear is settling into her bones.

She still cannot see anything- her cell is the perfect black of outer space or a deep ocean floor. The air is close and stale and smells like mold, which means that the walls probably aren't too far away. There is a small voice in the back of her head that tells her to be afraid of moving, just in case there is a deep pit directly in front of her that she cannot see. But no- she reasons- the air would not feel so still if that were the case. If there was anywhere else for the musty air to go, it would be moving, but it isn't moving at all. Everything is completely still. It is cold like a cave, but not as cold as the autumn air had been in Scotland only minutes ago. Still and stale as a tomb, but she tries not to think about that.

"Hello?" She calls, but it is as if the darkness swallows her words as soon as she utters them. Her voice sounds small and muted. "Can anyone hear me?" She tries to be louder this time, but there is no answer.

Giving up on communicating, she crawls forward blindly, running her hands across slime-slicked floors ahead of the rest of her body. After a few minutes of this, her fingers stumble over a different material. It is cloth and her heart picks up in her chest.

"Hello?" she says again, running her hands excitedly up the cloth, but as the heartbeats pass and her fingers trace up the ridge of what feels like it might be a leg and there is no answer, fear like bile rises into her mouth.

There is something under the cloth now, she knows, but she doesn't know what. She presses her fingers along the cloth and there is a swell that she touches gingerly. The flesh collapses like bad fruit under the gentle press of her fingertips and a fresh wave of rot wafts out toward her on the still air. Something wet seeps through the cloth and out over her fingertips before she can pull her hands back. She scuttles backwards until her spine scrapes the far wall and she is retching and she no longer cares if she is being brave because she is trapped in a room with a dead body and she has dead body on her _hands_. Her stomach might be trying to turn itself inside out, but after some time, her stomach has given up on expelling anything that isn't in it anymore and so she curls up on her left side, clutching her knees to her chest.

Perhaps because she is exhausted or perhaps because there is nothing else to do in perfect darkness, she slips off to sleep.

* * *

><p><strong>Monday, September 22nd. 3 days, 10 hours, 19 minutes.<strong>

When she wakes up, she has no idea how much time has passed. She stares into space without really knowing if her eyes are opened or closed anymore. The cell still smells like rot, only with an undertone of bile where she threw up her breakfast. She wishes she didn't to that, now. She's so hungry. Thirsty, too, and the palms of her hands are still sticky with decomposition fluids.

She was having that dream again- the one where she is casting a spell and there is a shadow watching her in the corner with infinite patience, waiting for her to finish. Cautiously, she considers what could possibly be the worst that could happen if she were to cast it. Assuming, of course, that it would even work without a wand. She's never bothered learning wandless magic, although right now she cannot fathom how she could be so lacking in foresight.

A tiny voice in the back of her mind reminds her that blood magic and a bunch of other old spells don't actually require wandwork, since most of it was older than the introduction of the first wands in about 458 B.C.. In fact, wands in England were even more recent than that, and were only seriously introduced to the British Isles with Ollivander (a great ancestor of the maker of her own wand) who came in with the Romans sometime during the middle ages.

If she ever gets out of this, she is going to get better at nonverbal magic. And then she is going to learn wandless magic and this will never be an issue again. She was so stupid not to consider this beforehand. She kicks herself for not having more forethought, and with nothing but her own discomfort to distract her, her self reprobation lingers much longer than it ought to, and settles on her like a suffocating mass.

Hunger and thirst are twin angry weights in her stomach, but she inhales deeply over the body and the gnawing hunger is gone- replaced by nausea. The thirst remains.

* * *

><p><strong>Tuesday, September 23rd. 2 days, 14 hours, 26 minutes.<strong>

After another sleep-wake cycle, Hermione is so thirsty that she licks the walls of her cell. They taste like salt and rot, but she is too relieved to feel something slick and wet on her tongue to care about the taste.

* * *

><p><strong>Wednesday, September 24th. 1 day, 5 hours, 3 minutes.<strong>

She takes three deep breaths and pulls her jumper around her nose and mouth before crouching down beside the body. The skin seems to alternately shrink and split under her fingers, but she continues to probe through the robes, looking for pockets. _Please let there be one. Please oh please_. But she can't hold her breath for that long and she is forced to step back, to take deep breaths and to wipe the sticky, stinking viscera onto the legs of her already filthy jeans before steeling herself for another round. She plunges her hands back into the robes, finds a pocket- empty- and another- also empty. Hope flutters between her ribs for a moment when her fingers close around something hard and she yanks it out into both of her hands, which are shaking now.

It is not a wand.

She runs her hands over the points, the sharp-smooth facets before collapsing against the wall beside the body, crying tears of frustration. It is a rock. She is angry that the body has nothing even remotely useful, and she is angry with herself for crying _again_. Can't she think of anything more _useful_ to do? At least the sobs come without tears at this point. Her body is trying too hard to conserve what little water she's been able to kick off of the walls to waste it on something as useless as weeping. She raises her arm to toss the stone across the cell, and hesitates. She lowers her arm, and pockets the stone instead, just in case. She is eighteen years old. She is in a war. Anything, even a stupid rock, can be a weapon. She wipes angrily at her dry eyes, willing her shoulders to stop shaking.

But days alone in complete darkness with only a corpse for company might make anyone cry, she reasons with herself, and perhaps it is not so bad to cry when there is no one to see it and no one but the dead to hear it.

* * *

><p><strong>Thursday, September 25th. 0 days, 0 hours, 8 minutes.<strong>

She snaps awake, her breath caught in her chest. At first she isn't sure what prompted her sudden alertness, but just as she is contemplating going back to sleep, she realizes what it is: The air is moving. It is so subtle that, had she not been sitting in dead air for (what she assumes must be) four days, she might not have noticed it at all, but it is there and it is fresh and the fear that has dulled in her chest over the last few days sharpens to a diamond-point.

She stays curled toward the wall, but her hand slips into her jeans pocket and closes around the sharp stone, warm from pressing so close to her thigh. The edges of it press into her palm like a dull knife and this is comforting to her. She is not unarmed and let history remember that when the death eaters came for Hermione Granger, she fought back. When Hannah Abbott returned to them to die in Hermione's arms, the coroner provided a detailed and chilling report of the damage her body had sustained. Hermione would rather go down fighting, all at once, than one piece at a time like Hannah.

Hinges scream as a door swings open somewhere and she can hear male voices somewhere above her and the air smells fresher, somehow, but dangerous in ways she would rather not consider. She clenches the stone harder and she can feel it cutting into her palm, warm blood welling where the point of it has broken skin.

An idea lights up the insides of her mind and her mouth and limbs are working before her brain has done more than have the thought. She is whispering in sharp Latin, the stone in gripped in her left hand as she drags it like a knife down across her right palm.

There are two pairs of feet tromping down distant stairs, but they pause as Hermione's voice raises to a shout. Warm blood drips down her fingers and she can hear it splat onto the ground. Without stopping to think or second-guess herself, she blindly smears the tetragram and circle with her still-bleeding hand onto the slimy stone, filling in runes where she guesses they might go. Magic like pins and needles staccatos across her shoulders and down her fingertips, where it seems to gather in the slice across her palm before slithering out of her along with her blood. A pounding begins behind her head and suddenly she is sure that she will explode from the pain of it, but as soon as it starts, it empties out of her. She gasps the final words of the incantation and slumps back, shaking with exhaustion.

The voices above her are closer now. She can hear someone trip-trip-tripping down a set of unseen stairs and she knows that they are coming for her and she knows, crushingly, that she has failed to save herself, and now she is too spent to even raise the stone against whoever comes.

There is a shifting behind her and, for one horrifying moment, she thinks that the body in the room has come to life again, and her mind flashes instantaneously to zombies that she has seen in movies or the Inferi that Voldemort commands. Then her eyes slide to the farthest corner from where she is and all the air is sucked from her lungs.

There is something there in the dark. It is impossibly large- and it seems to pull the oxygen and even the darkness from the air and it is watching her with hungry, patient eyes, although she cannot see it.

"What's going on down there?" Demands a harsh voice with a snarling accent.

"Sounds like our girl's awake, doesn't it?" Replies a second. _They sound French,_ she thinks absently, and then, _I'm going to die. _Whether by the beast in the darkness or the men on the stairs, she is going to die.

"I like it when they're awake." Says the second man. His words are hungry.

The first chuckles darkly and responds, but Hermione cannot hear him over the shush of her own blood through her veins. Her heart is beating too loudly, she knows it, because the creature is raising one long-fingered hand toward her and the fingers are stretching toward her and-

"Can't see nothing down here. _Lumos!"_

The last thing Hermione sees before the light temporarily blinds her is the creature in the corner, turning its massive, blank face towards the voices. She blinks in the light. It is not overpowering by any stretch- she can make out the outline of stairs through a window about six feet up in one of the walls, which she now figures must actually be a door. Her eyes snap back towards the corner to the creature, but there is nothing there. The creature is gone.

"What the-" says one of the voices.

There is a sharp intake of breath and a series of sharp cracks, like twigs snapping followed by something splashing onto stone. The echo of the splash lasts the longest of all the sounds because it echoes around her cell. Everything goes dark.

Hermione is too afraid to breathe in the silence that follows, but as the minutes stretch by, she begins to wonder if maybe she imagined it. Maybe she's finally gone mad down here in the dark. and now she's seeing things She presses her palm flat against her chest, against her racing heart.

There is a scream in the silence. One long, endless scream muffled by walls and distance. Something crashes. There is a _bang!_ of a spell firing and then another and another. The walls around her shake. Then there is a silence that stretches on for so long Hermione realizes her legs are cramped from crouching on the floor. She shifts onto her bottom, flexing her toes. There is a tap, tap, tap down the flight of stairs, and the light returns, flooding fully into the cell. She licks her lips but cannot force herself to move.

The door swings open soundlessly, revealing a stone hallway. In the center of the hallway, laying flat on the damp flagstones, there is a wand. The tip is radiating the bright golden light of a strong lumos, but the wand is on the floor- untouched by any hand. Slowly, Hermione rises from her position on the ground, takes one tentative step forward and then another. She doesn't look behind her. She doesn't have to look back to know that there are hungry eyes upon her, but she knows- without knowing how she knows- that it will not harm her. Not now, at least. She bends down to pick up the wand, hesitating only for a moment, but when her fingers close around it, the spell ends and she is plunged back into darkness. Without sparing a second thought, she turns on the spot, and disapparates with a sharp _crack!_

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><p><strong>End note: I'm a fucking fairy- I need your applause to live. Reviews are pretty much the written equivalent of applause. <strong>


	3. The Hood

**A/N: **To the anon who sent me the message about adipocere: I LOVE YOU! MAKE AN ACCOUNT OR GIVE ME A NAME THAT I MAY SHOWER YOU WITH PRAISE AND ADORATION. This is probably the single greatest thing that has happened in all of my writing life. True story.

I apologize in advance for the quality of this chapter. II wanted to have it more polished for you guys, but I am so, so tired. When you find errors, let me know in the comments or via private message and I'll fix the when I have time. I really just wanted you to get something this week, because I said I would. Also, I think I have the flu. Pity me!

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><p><strong>Chapter 3: The Hood<strong>

**Thursday, September 25th**

The room around her is a riot of noise and color. Red light fireworks across her vision.

"_Stupefy!"_ someone yells and she is frozen to the spot before she can even tell them _It's Me! Hermione!_ and her eyes roll back into her head and she falls backwards and the last thing she sees before blackness swallows her is the monster in the corner, and she watches her fall reflected in its pebble eyes, toppling, toppling, gone.

_Enervate_! And she gasps in a breath like she was just winded.

"When we left Harry's Aunt's and Uncle's, what was the first thing you said once we were airborne?"

Hermione is still gasping, but she knows she isn't in the sitting room of Grimmauld place anymore, where she meant to be. For a horrifying second, she thinks she's back in the black room with the body and her monster for company, but there is wandlight all around her and Kingsley is shaking her shoulder so hard that her teeth rattle. She is pretty sure that she is in the wine cellar of Grimmauld Place, based on the smells of rot and rat droppings.

"Answer me!" He says and his voice is low, but laced with menace.

"I-I-Hold on let me think. I said 'I was hoping I wouldn't have to ride one of these again.'"

Kingsley stops shaking her, his hand drops from her shoulder, and eyes her warily, like she is a dog who might bite. She reaches into her back pocket for her wand, but, of course, it isn't there. Kingsley stands, but fear moves her hands for her. They dart out and grab the collar of his robe. "Wait," she gasps. "What did you tell me when I gave you my notes on the book at the Burrow the other week?"

The Minister looks annoyed, and then he looks impressed and then he looks amused, all in very short order. "This is good work, Hermione," he repeats, "Impressive."

She nods once and lets him go, slumping back against a wooden barrel.

He turns to the lights around them, he says, "It's her. Go ahead."

Kingsley takes a step backwards, and all of a sudden she is swarmed by warm bodies and people are saying her name and they are talking all at once and she is so _tired_ and so glad to be back that she just sits there and accepts all of the love that Harry, Ginny, Ron, and Mrs. Weasley are heaping on her and she weeps silently because she is just so _happy_ to be where she is and everything else just feels like a bad dream.

* * *

><p><strong>Thursday, September 26th. Late at night.<strong>

"What happened to you, Hermione?" Asks Kingsley. They are at the dark-stained dining room table and Kreacher has left an enormous plate of shepherds pie hot in front of her. The spoon hardly paused in its track from the plate to her mouth to the plate to her mouth and on and on. She is so hungry. She had forgotten how wonderful food is. "One of the Death Eaters grabbed you, disapparated, and then no news for five days."

She relates the story of her capture and the body in the dark, dark cell as best as she can between mouthfuls.

"You should slow down if you haven't eaten in a few days," suggests Kingsley, but he is too smart to try to take the plate away from her. He looks tired, she sees now, but she is too busy shoving food into her mouth to really care too much yet.

Other than this, he doesn't interrupt her until she finishes. "And then I disapparated back here because I couldn't think of anywhere else to go and I was worried that someone would come to check on me again."

"But how did you get the wand, Hermione?"

Mrs. Weasley has already chased Harry, Ron, and Ginny out of the dining room, since the minister wanted to speak to Hermione alone. She scrapes the plate with the spoon.

"What do you mean? I just told you. I-"

"You said that there was a rock in the robes of the decomposing body and that you used 'the wand' to apparate back here. I don't quite understand what happened, though. Was there a wand in the robes, too? Is that how you escaped?"

She tilts her head to one side, her eyebrows knitting together. Kreacher magics the plate off of the table. "May I have more, please, Kreacher?" Hermione's attention is immediately on the elf. The minister waits patiently. The house elf bows so low that his long, drooping nose almost touches the floor and Regulus' locket dangles off of his thin, wrinkled neck as he hobbles back off to the kitchen. He wasn't wearing it when he left for Fleur and Bill's house. She wonders what has changed since she left.

She returns her attention to Kingsley, who is staring intently at her. Like she is a puzzle or like he is meeting her for the first time. "What? No. That's silly. No. It was just a rock in the pocket," she pauses, winces as her stomach clenches suddenly, "But I used the rock to," she swallows heavily, "To do a," she can feel the shepherd's pie starting to claw its way back up her throat but she tries to hang onto it because she is still hungry and she is still afraid that there won't be food next time, "Spell. Got the wand." she chokes out before she doubles over in her seat and the shepherd's pie tumbles out and over the ancient carpet, stinging her tongue and the backs of her teeth.

Her eyes water as she wretches again, painfully heaving the contents of her stomach out of her nose and her mouth.

"Did you cast a wandless summoning spell?"

Hermione gives a noncommittal groan because she has just realized that she has gotten vomit in her hair. Kingsley takes this as an affirmative and she doesn't correct him. She vomits again, but has the wherewithal to hold her hair back from her face.

He rubs her back in small circles, like he is trying to be comforting, but has no experience with the gesture. "Do you still have the rock?" he asks when she seems to have finished.

She nods, but doesn't trust her voice. Her eyes are shut as she wills her insides to settle down. She fishes with shaking fingers into her pocket, but after a moment, she opens her eyes and digs in her other pocket. She stands, digging into her back pockets. "It was here," she says. "I had it. I swear I put it in my pocket before I disapparated."

Kingsely stands, too, casts _scourgify_, and gives her a long and tired look. "You're probably confused. It's been a long few days. Go take a shower. I'll send Kreacher up with some soup, but I've got to Floo the ministry first and owl Remus. We've been looking for you around the clock since you were taken. I need to tell them that you're safe."

* * *

><p><strong>Friday, September 27th.<strong>

Fred is dead. Fred Weasley. She only finds out when George comes with his parents to see her the day after she gets back. No one thought to tell her because the anguish of loss is still such a fresh wound that everyone who is suffering thinks everyone else knows and is suffering, too, but Hermione is still confused to wake up in a bed and she won't turn the lights off even when she sleeps and so the news hits her like a slap across the face or a fist in the stomach. George is a mirror without a reflection. He doesn't smile and he doesn't blink and Molly Weasley hovers but it's obvious that she doesn't know what to say and so when they sit down to lunch- Harry, Ron, Hermione, Ginny, George, Molly, Arthur, Bill, Fleur, Kingsley, Tonks, and Remus- Hermione sits down next to George at the far end of the table and slips her hand into his. He squeezes it so tight that she thinks her fingers might snap, but she doesn't make him let go.

"It was a fire," Lupin explains after dinner as he and Hermione are clearing the table. She didn't ask, he volunteers the information. "The same day we lost you."

And then Hermione knows who it was who was screaming under the burning beast and regret stings her tongue and eyes. If only she had been faster. She saw him. She knew what was happening. She could have been there. She could have helped.

"Did he suffer?" she asks, because she has always been too curious for her own good.

Lupin sighs and looks much older than he really is, "Yes, I'm afraid. Burning alive is rarely, shall we say, pleasant."

* * *

><p><strong>Friday, September 27th. Late at night.<strong>

Hermione wakes up in a cold sweat, her heart is pounding in her ears and she is very, very afraid. She is on her back, facing the ceiling and she does not dare to open her eyes. There is a weight on her chest, making it hard to breathe. It is inches from her face and it smells like the memory of rot. It's looking curiously down at her, she knows, its long nails poised above her throat, above the pulse point. She quakes.

Outside her room, there is yelling, but she cannot make out the words. _Please_, she begs silently in her head, _please, someone help me!_ _Help me!_

Tears leak out from between her closed eyes and the creature watches with its flat stare as the tears slide sideways down her face and into her ears.

"You can't just watch her sleep!" Comes Molly's tired voice.

"Why not?" Protests Ron. "You have no idea! No idea what she's been through and I'm not going to leave her alone to deal with whatever messed up shit they did to her! You heard what Kingsley said! Could barely get a word out of her."

_Please please please oh pleaseplease_. It's claw hovers over her eye. It will blind her, she knows this suddenly, because sight is the barrier between them.

"But Ron," Molly tries feebly, "she's a _girl_."

"What's your point? So is Ginny."

But it hesitates. It wants to hurt her, but it won't. Hermione knows it very badly wants to reach inside of her and pull pieces out one at a time, but it will not touch her. Not now. Not yet. Still it does not move. There is light filtering in through her eyelids, and she can see its shadow, impossibly large, moving on top of her.

"Hermione's as good as a sister to us," Harry says quietly.

"Yeah!" Ron is louder. "And I'm not going to let my sister suffer whatever bloody...whatever they did to her... alone!"

The door to her room bangs open and the weight leaves her chest. She gasps sharply and sits bolt upright, her eyes wide and unseeing. She is awake, now, and the room is empty and it is not as dark as she thought it was. There is as lamp in the corner and the room is not dark, even without the light outlining her two best friends in the doorway.

Ron swears and leans back against the door, clutching a rolled up sleeping bag to his chest, but Harry is by her side in an instant, dropping his own sleeping back and wrapping her in a one-armed hug as she forces her breath to slow down before she loses it completely.

"Sorry," she says, offering Harry a wavering smile.

"Don't mention it," Harry answers, not looking at her. "It's fine." His voice is light.

Ron slowly walks forward and sits down on her other side. "You're alright, yeah?" He asks, and just like that, the months of awkward dating and then even awkwarder not-dating are buried in the distant past and she and Ron are friends again and this, she knows, is half of why she will always love Ron as a friend- because he is loyal to her no matter what. He may wander off and they may fight, but he always comes back and is always there when it counts.

"Yeah," she says, and means it when she says it, "Yeah. I'm ok."

* * *

><p><strong>Saturday, September 28th.<strong>

She doesn't want to be idle. She feels like if she is left alone for too long the dark will creep in along the edges of the room and will swallow her back into that stinking, wretched room. She asks- no, begs- Kingsley to give her something to do and so he hands her a stack of parchments.

"A code," he says, "We don't know what it means, but we've been intercepting pieces of it for the last two months."

"You think they're planning something," she says. It isn't a question. She is looking at the top page. It is a mess of runes, and she only knows about sixty percent of them on sight.

"They're always planning something. So are we."

* * *

><p><strong>Tuesday, October 1st.<strong>

It is three days until Harry and Ron will leave her side, although she knows it will be much longer until they all stop sleeping in the same room. They seemed to be making up for her capture by remaining vigilant now. But war doesn't stop when someone goes missing and it certainly doesn't stop when they come back and seven days after Hermione has returned, there is a battle somewhere and Harry and Ron have to go, although Hermione knows that they would both rather stay with her. There is something comfortable in pretending that it is just the three of them and the rest of the world doesn't exist.

Before they leave, Harry presses her wand into her hand. Her wand. The one she thought was lost when she was captured. She thought it was gone forever and hasn't even bothered looking for it, she was too afraid to know what had become of it and now it is here in her hands, but Harry is pleading with her before she can raise her voice against him. "Please don't do anything. Not until we get back. I can't lose you again, Hermione, and neither can Ron. Not now."

Then he is gone before she can say _what about me? What am I supposed to do without you?_ and she is fairly certain that he planned it like that, but now that she is alone, she doesn't know what to do with herself. Crookshanks winds around her ankles. He appeared suddenly two days ago and hasn't left her side since, only sleeping when she is busy with Harry and Ron and never at all when it is just the two of them in the room.

* * *

><p><strong>Friday, October 4th.<strong>

She is getting nowhere in the code breaking. Something about moving something something. She asks to be put back into battle.

Remus shakes his head. He is an old man. He is a mountain worn to dust. "No, Hermione. The last time you went into battle, we almost lost you, and if that weren't bad enough, Harry and Ron were going crazy looking for you. I feared we would lose them, too. So, no. I think it best if you just work on going through those artifacts at the ministry."

Hermione is not a fool- she knows that Remus is telling her that she is a liability and she wants to scream because this is _her_ war, too.

In the hallway, the portrait of Sirius' mother is awakened. "_Filth! Scum! By-products of dirt and vileness! Half-breeds, mutants, freaks!"_

Hermione would destroy that portrait if she could. She would rip it from the wall and splinter it if she could.

"_Be gone from this place! Mudbl-"_

Just then, there is a sound of wood splintering and cloth ripping and the portrait of Walburga Black screams once.

Lupin and Hermione are in the hall immediately, wands drawn, backs to the wall. Lupin raises a hand to stop her from walking forward, and he takes a step towards the hall and then another, but a strangled cry rings out.

"No!" Howls Kreacher, "No! My Mistress! My Mistress! She is," and then they can hear as Kreacher crumples to the floor with broken sobs.

Lupin and Hermione rush forward now, caution discarded behind them. Where was once the portrait hung in the long hallway leading from the front door there was now a portrait-sized splintering in the wood, a gaping hole into the dining room on the other side of the wall.

There are feet pounding around them now.

"What the hell?" Shouts Ron as he and Harry shoot down the stairs.

"What happened?" Tonks barrels around the corner, knocking over the troll-leg umbrella stand.

Mrs. Weasley is close behind her, "Is everyone alright?"

Kreacher howls like an animal in pain.

"The security must have been compromised. We have to go. Everyone, grab your things. Ron, watch the door with me. Nymphadora-"

"I'll watch the door with you."

"No. Help Molly pack. We have to leave fast. Get word to your mother to lower the wards. Everyone move! We have fifteen minutes" He shouts the last part and the entire inhabitants of Number 12 Grimmauld Place snaps into action at once and Hermione is left in the hallway with Ron and Remus, whose wands are trained on the front door.

Hermione's tongue is lead and her ears are underwater and before she can tell Remus not to panic, he has already turned to her. He is already saying, "Hermione, go! We don't have much time," and her feet are carrying her up to her room to help Harry throw random, reduced items into his trunk and into her beaded bag and they are leaving the house and they are apparating in groups of three to Tonk's mother's house and things are moving so fast that she does not have time to stop and think and she barely manages to hang onto Crookshanks, who has been shoved into his carrier by too many hands.

* * *

><p><strong>Saturday, October 12th.<strong>

Hermione cannot sit still. They have all been at Ted and Andromeda Tonks' house for three days. Even Kreacher was eventually pulled from the ragged bits of his mistress's portrait and Hermione is sure that she is going mad.

Harry and Ron are out hunting horcruxes again- something she is still sore to realize she isn't allowed to do. They have gone, she knows, because it was killing Harry to hide out in a safehouse when people were dying for a war he is not allowed to fight. Not yet, anyway. The order won't risk losing him before he kills Voldemort. They've all rallied around a prophecy they have never even heard (although she knows and Harry knows and Kingsley and Lupin know the details), but they aren't so confident that they'll let Harry loose in war if they can help it.

So he and Ron have gone off hunting horcruxes, but all either boy seems to want to do is lock her in a little box until everything is better. They won't even tell her why Kreacher has the locket. Which is just _so stupid_, as she shouted at them before they left, because she is the clever one.

But she is also their Hermione. There is a tactical advantage to her staying behind, too. She can do so much good for the order by figuring out dark curses before they are ever used. She must put her massive intellect to use, and so she hugged them and tried not to cry until after they left. She tries to ignore the ache that comes with knowing that it is Ron who Harry needs with him for the hunt, and not her. She tries not to think about how it has always been Harry and Ron and if she wasn't so useful, so clever, they might not have ever wanted her at all. She should be figuring out that damned code, and she is trying. She knows, now, that they are moving something, but she doesn't know anything else about it- including what is it and where is is going. There is a series of numbers, repeated in each page of parchment: 099058400171 and it has to mean something, but she doesn't know what. It isn't an Azkaban number, it doesn't have any arithmancy significance. It doesn't mean anything, as far as she can tell, but it is always there, and so it must be significant.

Hermione is sharing a room with Ginny who is _nice_, but who always pretends to be harder than she is, and sometimes Hermione wearies of Ginny's brave sneer and the scared eyes behind the look. They listen to Potterwatch now, and they listen for names of people they know in the list of the dead. Tonight was a good night- no one new is dead or missing and Hermione is going mad because she knows that something is about to happen, only she doesn't know what and she doesn't know when.

* * *

><p><strong>Thursday, October 17th.<strong>

She is in the backyard, watching the orange and pink sunset without really thinking about it when the call comes in the form of a patronus shooting past her and into the house. She races back inside just as Tonks vanishes with a snap.

Her mind is moving twice as fast now, because she is frightened and she is more awake than she has been in days, and suddenly the pieces of the code are falling together. If something big is happening tonight, then they are using it as a distraction. If it is happening tonight, and she knows the date and she knows the time, then maybe, maybe the rest are coordinates? She doesn't have time to wonder if this is correct because if she is right, then it has already started and she is wasting precious time to intercept...whatever it is that they are moving. She is Hermione Granger. She is the cleverest witch of her age. She has to help.

She unfurls a map on the kitchen table, locates the coordinates, and disapparates before she can second guess herself.

She is being squeezed through a tube that is too tight for her to fit through and she knows that her lungs are going to explode from the pressure and then, all at once, she is thrown out of the too-tight tube and she is rolling along the ground and she slams into a tree- causing sparks of color to flash across her vision and a hiss of pain escapes through her teeth.

"What was that?" Calls a woman's voice that Hermione thinks she might recognize, but cannot place.

"I don't know, Alecto," comes a gravelly voice, dripping with ill-disguised disgust. Yaxely. Hermione is on her feet and her wand is in her hand in an instant, staring into the darkening woods around her. "Why don't you go check?"

Alecto mumbles something, low and sulky.

"Then I suggest we get a move on. The Order has already started to trickle in, and I want our prisoner out of here before he is spotted."

Hermione edges forward silently, hugging trees as she approaches the voices. Bravery is beating in her blood now. They have a prisoner. A prisoner who needs help. Their cargo. She was right. She was _right!_

She can see them now. There are three of them around a dark lump on the ground.

"Lumos!" Says the tall one in front, and lights up his own face. Hermione doesn't recognize him, but he can't be much older than she is. He bends down to the lump on the ground. It is a body, but Hermione had expected as much, given the conversation she just overheard.

The body looks to belong to a tall man in a tattered gray shirt and dark pants. He has no shoes and his toes are turning a worrying shade of blue in the dying light. His arms and legs are bound in thick, winding ropes, but he has a black bag over his head, and so Hermione doesn't know who he might be, or whether he is dangerous enough to merit this treatment.

"How are we supposed to move him?" Asks the one Hermione doesn't know, and lodges a kick at their prisoner, catching him in the side so hard Hermione would swear she heard bone snap, but the man in the hood doesn't so much as moan. Hermione wonders if he is conscious. If he is human.

"Levicorpus, you idiot," snarls Yaxley. He must be the taller figure in the back, then.

"I've got the light," retorts the man in the front. "Someone else will have to lift him."

"Carrow." Yaxley is cool when he says it. He is in charge in whatever mission this is.

Alecto Carrow grumbles something as she shuffles forward, points her wand at the body.

Hermione takes one step forward, and a twig snaps under her boot. Four heads snap toward her as she flattens herself against the tree, narrowly missing the two jets of green light that are fired at precisely where she just stood.

Several things happen at once. Hermione whirls around the tree, shouting "Stupefy!" The prone figure on the ground erupts into action, and he is on his feet faster than Hermione can see, and throws himself, still bound, at the death eater with the light. The man falls under the weight of his prisoner, something snaps loudly, his wand is thrown from his hand, and they are all plunged into darkness.

There is a yell and the sound of something being dragged quickly across the ground. Yaxely swears loudly and shoots a spell out into the darkness, and for one second something completely inhuman appears, dazzling yellow light flickering off of its flat, featureless face as the yellow light connects with it. And Hermione realizes that it was just a tree as the bark splinters off in hundreds of directions at once.

Hermione uses the fading light burned into her retinas to send a stunning spell in Yaxley's direction.

There is nothing at all after that for long, painful moments until Hermione finds enough air in her lungs to whisper "Lumos!" Her light is weak at first, but as she scans the space between the trees and illuminates no standing death eaters, the light gets brighter and catches on a dark mass on the ground. She swivels and sees Yaxely, unconscious, but still breathing, before she returns her attention to the prone figures.

"Please, no," she prays to no one as she rushes forward.

As she does, the mass moves, and the prisoner rolls back, revealing the body of the young death eater, his neck badly snapped to the side. With shaking fingers, Hermione reaches down toward the death eater, checking for a pulse.

"You killed him. He's dead," she tells the prisoner, and is surprised that her voice does not shake as much as her hands do, "And Yaxely's unconscious, but I don't know where Carrow went." She glances around. There is no sign of her, but she knows that she cannot be too far away. "Are you hurt?"

The prisoner's hood cocks gently to one side for a moment.

"Can you speak English?"

There is still no response.

She considers taking his hood off, but then her eyes slide back to the dead death eater, still warm under her fingertips. Ideally, she would like to avoid a similar fate from a badly deranged prisoner of war, who could be a friend or a foe, and was dangerous either way. "Petrificus Totalus," she says and the body of the prisoner locks up immediately. She edges forward and shakily pulls off the hood.

At first, she doesn't recognize the wizard staring stonily against her wandlight. His hair is shaved so close to his scalp that she can't tell what color it would be, and most of his face is so badly covered in bruises and swollen, split tissue that it takes her a moment to piece together the flat gray eyes locked on hers. His stare is vaguely calculating, even while petrified. The way a lion watches a mouse when it is not hungry.

"Malfoy?" She asks this out loud because she is so startled that the word leaves her lips before she can stop them. She waves her wand and he is unfrozen, but still tied in place. She locks his legs and arms with jinxes just to be safe. She has seen what he can do while bound.

His eyes snap up to hers when she says his name, and then they are tracing her face like she is a book that he can read.

Hermione entertains the idea of leaving him here for the death eaters or the Order or the wolves to find, but she can't really leave him, of course, even though he most certainly deserves it. Even though it is his fault that Dumbledore is dead and this war is blasting holes in her life. Everything, she realizes suddenly, can be traced back to this stupid boy and all the fool choices he has made. It is sorely tempting to leave him here to rot, but at the end of the day, she is Hermione Granger and leaving people to rot is just not what she does.

"Okay," she is talking to herself now, and they both know it, "Okay. Alright. I'm not going to leave you here, just don't try to do to me what you did to him," she nods back at the death eater behind her, rubs her thumb in small circles around the base of her wand, "I have-" _I have a serious desire to leave you here to rot, so don't test me. I have friends who don't know where I am and who won't notice I was gone if I get back first. I have no reason to save you. _"a wand." She holds it and waggles it back and forth. The lumos wavers with the motion. It makes her feel faintly carsick. "Ok?"

He- obviously- does not respond. Because he can't. Because his jaw is so swollen that she is surprised he can still hold his head upright.

"Ok. _Finite!_"

Malfoy doesn't move.

"Right. Are you hurt?"

Malfoy gives her a long look through his badly beaten face. His eyes narrow, and she only catches it because she is staring at them- still the only part of his face that she can recognize.

"I mean in any immediately life threatening way. Obviously you've been better." She glances at Yaxely's prone figure. She should take him to the ministry for questioning. It is the smart thing to do. , but she can't risk leaving Malfoy for someone else to find or for Carrow when she comes back.

He shakes his head. Blood trickles from his nose in a slow-moving stream with the gesture and it glistens black in her wand light. She wonders if it is as painful as it looks.

"Ok. Are you in need of rescuing?"

He tilts his head to one side and doesn't answer. His eyebrows might lower, but that could also just be a trick of the shimmer of wandlight.

She folds her arms across her chest, suddenly feeling very cold and also very stupid. "Look, I don't know what they wanted with you or where they were taking you, but Carrow is probably going to be back soon and with help. Maybe you'd rather just stay here to take your chances rather than accept help from a- from someone like me. That's up to you." She drags bent fingers through her hair, driving it back from her face. She should have put it up before she decided to take off on some half-formed lead. Or, better yet, she shouldn't have gone at all, or at least _told _someone where she is. "I don't know. What I want to know is, are you, Draco Malfoy, king of Ferrets, in need of rescuing? Yes or no?"

He is quiet for so long that Hermione thinks he isn't going to answer. She is waiting for him to either nod or shake his head. His jaw is swollen on the left side so badly that she is sure it must be broken, but she isn't sure where. Then, slowly, a red tongue darts out between his lips and moistens them, "Yes," he says slowly. He sounds like he is speaking through a mouthful of granite. His front teeth are jagged points and pink with old blood.

She waits for him to say something else, but when he doesn't, she takes a step forward, eyes wildly tracing the trees around them, afraid of the dark and silence. "Great. Ok. I'm going to stupefy you and take you somewhere safe. Ok?"

He takes in a breath like he is going to protest and so "Stupefy!" she shouts before he has the chance.


	4. Thick Blood

****A/N******: Thank you so much for your kind words! The reviews have given me the drive to continue to post chapters in a timely fashion! Just so everyone is fully aware ****IF I GET REVIEWS, I FIGURE PEOPLE ARE INTERESTED. IF I DO NOT GET REVIEWS (even if they say you think I should change something or even if they're just like, "Hey, I read this") THEN I DON'T THINK ANYONE LIKES IT AND I WILL PROBABLY STOP POSTING CHAPTERS BECAUSE I DON'T WANT TO WASTE ANYONE'S TIME.**** I don't actually have confidence in this stuff. I'm just sort of banging a keyboard and hoping something comes out ok.**

* * *

><p><strong>Thursday, October 17th. Continued.<strong>

They arrive in the backyard of Andromeda's house and Hermione steps away from Malfoy's still-prone body, dropping his wrist like his skin has burned her. Her chest is heaving, but Andromeda is already walking out towards her, her wand lit and the house lit up behind her, bright yellow.

"Where have you been?" Andromeda is always calm, always composed and cold in a way that Hermione at once fears and admires. Her voice rings clearly in the still night air. Hermione can't tell if Andromeda even knew she had left in the first place, but she betrays no surprise now.

"I figured out the code. Well, enough of it to be getting on with. The death eaters were moving a thing. Tonight." And with this, Hermione Granger wins the Most Informative Speech of the Year award. "They had a prisoner."

Andromeda Tonks approaches the body on the ground at Hermione's feet. "Who is it?" She asks and there is no anger, still, although Hermione is sure that someone will have anger for her later. She was very stupid. Very rash. She could have gotten herself killed. Worse than killed, even, if they had tortured information out of her.

"Draco Malfoy," Hermione's eyes follow Andromeda's down to Malfoy's battered face, mangled and expressionless, still stunned. The patches of coagulating blood along the jagged lines of broken skin shine orange and gold in the light from the house.

The older witch considers this for a moment, simply staring at Malfoy's calm features, she looks like she is calculating the weight of each bruise, the net worth of shredded skin. "Narcissa's son?" she asks eventually, and suddenly Hermione realizes that she was looking for her sister in Malfoy's face.

Hermione remembers then that Andromeda and Narcissa are sisters. Both Blacks before they married and this might be the first time that Andromeda is seeing her nephew and he is all but unrecognizable. When was the last time she even laid eyes on her sister? "Yes," she says eventually, because there are no real words for this sort of situation. Hermione rubs her thumb over the base of her wand.

"You shouldn't have brought him here," Andromeda is still staring down at him, etching the image of him into her brain.

"Sorry?" Hermione voice is high when she answers and she rocks forward on her feet because she is sure that she has misheard Andromeda's words because her expression is too tender to mean that she is turning him away. Where will he go, if not here?

"He is a death eater and he probably has a trace on him. Take him to Azkaban immediately. I will send word to Dawlish that you will be bringing him shortly."

"Azkaban?" Hermione echoes. She is trying to keep up with what is happening, but she can't understand. "No," she says because maybe she wasn't clear the first time. She tilts her chin down and speaks out loud and clear, just so there is no confusion. "He was their prisoner. Look what they did to him!" She gestures with her left had at Malfoy's face, which is still leaking blood onto the grass.

"And he is also a death eater," Andromeda repeats. She is calm, and this is starting to annoy Hermione, just a bit. Out of the corner of her eye, Hermione sees a shadow move, but Andromeda doesn't seem to notice it because she is still staring down at Malfoy with an almost loving expression. "How they deal with their own is no business of ours."

"This is insane!" Hermione counters and her voice is loud and she is gesturing at the air between them. "He's hurt!"

"No." Andromeda's eyes rise to Hermione's face and that cold composure in them stops Hermione before she can say another word. Andromeda's hands are clasped in front of her, around her wand, "This is a war. He is the enemy. Dawlish will let the Aurors on guard know that you are on your way."

Hermione shakes her head. She has to calm down. Shouting won't accomplish anything except making her look more childish than she is. "I've never been to Azkaban before. I can't take him there."

"To the ministry, then. Kingsley should still be in his office. It isn't too late yet. I would offer to take him, but I am on healer's watch until Nymphadora and the others return. Excuse me." She turns and heads back to the house. The conversation is very clearly over.

Hermione takes three deep breaths through her nose. Of course she shouldn't have brought Draco Malfoy here. She was a fool to think otherwise. But what else could she do? He is laid out as still as a corpse when she takes his wrist and apparates them both to the ministry.

* * *

><p>The Atrium is empty when she arrives and she doesn't know where Kingsley's office is. Since the assassination of Rufus Scrimgeour on the night of Bill and Fleur's wedding, the ministry has kept the movements of the new minister as quiet as possible to avoid another attack. Thank god the Death Eater coup for the ministry failed. Hermione doesn't know what they would do if it fell.<p>

Malfoy is laying on the ground at her feet, but his wrist is still in her hand. His fingers twitch.

Gingerly, Hermione sets his wrist on the ground at his side. She takes a step away from him and points her wand at his chest.

His eyes open and stare at the ceiling before wheeling in a slow circle around himself, taking in his surroundings.

"We're in the Atrium at the ministry." she says, although he probably doesn't need her to say it. Her voice echoes around her even though she was trying to be quiet. She looks around, too. The shadows are long in the corners around the black fireplaces and she tries not to imagine what could be lurking in those dark spaces. She remembers the dark cell and the body and the monster in the corner and she takes a step back towards Malfoy without realizing it. "We're waiting for someone."

"Who?"

His voice startles her. She didn't think he would speak, had forgotten that he could. His voice is shoes scraping over gravel, and it is deeper than she remembers it being, but that is probably from months of disuse.

She opens her mouth to tell him the truth about why they are here- that Andromeda turned them away and now he is going to prison and it is in no way her fault at all- but then there are footsteps. Several sets of them and there are loud voices that she knows, but doesn't believe. She is afraid, suddenly that something has gone terribly wrong and no one has yet realized it.

"Untie me," he hisses so quickly she has to replay his words in her head to understand their meaning.

She must give him a look that says quite clearly how insane he must think she is, because he gives her an even look and says very calmly, "Fenrir Greyback and six of his werewolves are coming up the stairs at the end of the hall. They are unkind to witches. My body may slow them down for a few minutes, at most, but they will persist until they find you. They can smell you as clearly as I can and they are faster than you are. I will not attack you. I do not want to die by the hand of your great black friend, Mudblood. I am more useful alive than dead."

She only has a second to make a decision and she doesn't have time to piece together his words, but he is clearly not on good terms with the death eaters and the enemy of her enemy must, hopefully, be her friend. Under normal circumstances, his use of the word _Mudblood_ would be enough for her to leave him there to rot, but his voice is so pathetic, slurred around broken teeth and a badly broken jaw. She whispers _Diffindo_ and tries to aim at the thick knot in the rope at the side of his thigh, but her hands shake so badly that the spell also cuts through the dark fabric of his pants and the skin beneath them, too. He lets out a sound that might have been a sigh and then he is on his feet.

Hermione doesn't have time to apologize or scream before he is upon her, one hand clamped around her mouth and the other gripped around her wrist so hard that she can feel the bone bending under his fingers. "Don't make a sound," he breathes into her ear. His breath smells like iron and rot. Her neck aches from straining against his grip and she realizes that he is dragging her back towards, away from the staircase and the voices. She stumble along, her feet begging for purchase, but it doesn't matter because he is moving her whether she wants to go or not. She tried to raise her wand against him, but of course he keeps her wrist pinned to her side as they move.

Then, suddenly, he is not moving anymore and she realizes that they are in an alcove that she has never noticed before. It must be a storage closet whose door has been left open, a disinterested part of her brain figures distractingly. Once they are in the closet, his pins her against the far wall and pulls his hand from her wrist. He keeps his other hand clamped firmly across her mouth, though, and breathes, "Not a noise, no matter what." against her hair.

Of course, her first instinct it to punch him in the face, tie him up, and then disapparate both of them somewhere safe, but Malfoy isn't paying any attention to her. His face is half-turned turned toward the open door like a dog scenting the air and the voices are getting closer. Light is streaming into the cupboard and his face is blank as a doll's, his eyes fixed out of the room onto something she can't see. Hermione's back is pressed against the far wall and Malfoy has positioned himself directly between her in the door. Probably to keep her from running out and giving them away, she thinks savagely, as if she would ever be as stupid as that!

Someone hoots in laughter and there is the scuffling of shoes across the stone. Someone breathes heavily. Hermione realizes he lied to her. There is a flood of feet across marble.

"Come on now, Mister Minister," Fenrir's voice is more wolf than human. "Where's your sense of fun?"

Kingsley answers, but his voice is too quiet for Hermione to hear him, even though she holds her breath and strains her ears to listen.

There is a round of jeering laughter and something slaps against the ground. Hermione struggles against Malfoy's grip, but his hand across her chest is like an iron bar. She tries to scream against his hand, but cannot make a sound. She bites at him, tastes the tang of iron, but still he doesn't move.

"Now, that wouldn't be in good sport, would it, Mister Minister?"

She can't start turning to disapparate and she can't get her arm up to hex him. She kicks him instead, brings her hands up to claw at his arm, raking away thick tracts of skin, but he doesn't so much as look at her. Gone are the days when an ounce of pain would send Malfoy squealing for his father. Her face is wet with tears. She curses him over and over in her mind and wishes she had left him with the death eaters in the wood.

There is a scuffle of footsteps and the sound of skin connecting with skin. Someone swears, but others laugh.

"We've got a fighter, hey boys!" Greyback crows.

Hermione closes her eyes, willing the tears to stop. _What are you doing?_ she silently prays, _Someone, anyone help him!_

This is the point when the Order of the Phoenix is supposed to sweep in and save the day. Here is when the aurors swarm through the fireplaces and kill Greyback and his monsters. Where is Lupin? Where is Dumbledore? Where is god or justice or the triumph of good over evil? Kingsley Shacklebolt, the minister of magic, who rubbed circles on Hermione's back when she vomited onto the floor, who handed her stacks of code to decipher, is being taken away by werewolves. Where are Harry and Ron?

A scuffle breaks out in the Atrium and Hermione freezes when someone shouts, "He's got my wand!" Hope roars wild in her chest.

"Expecto Patronum!" Bellows Kingsley, "Find Arthur," he snaps out as someone collides with him, "The ministry has fallen!" The last syllable is cut off as he smacks to the floor and Hermione winces at the sound, "They are coming!" There is a flash of white light as Kingsley's Lynx rushes past their closet.

Greyback swears loudly, "The Dark Lord isn't going to like that. Come on!" There is the sound of something heavy dragging across the floor. Hermione can see the green light of a fireplace coming to life across the hall. "The Manor!" growls Greyback. six voices do the same and then the atrium is silent.

It is only when he steps forward into the Atrium without her that Hermione realizes Malfoy has released her.

Hermione snaps into action like a rubber band snapping into shape. Her mind is filing away new information, processing changes, and looking up material even as she chases after Malfoy and stops a foot behind him as he bends stiffly at the waist, examining something that she hasn't seen yet. Questions are tumbling one after the other out of her mouth. "Can we follow them to the manor? How did you know how many there were? Where are they taking him? What are you looking at? Are you working with them? Answer me, Malfoy!"

He crouches down and when she walks right up behind him, she sees that it is blood in a pool on the floor that he is staring at. "Whose is that?" She asks before she can stop herself. She thinks she knows, but she doesn't want to assume anything, especially now that nothing seems as stable as it did half an hour ago. She imagines that the floor she is standing on is ice, only she didn't realize that before she heard it start to snap under her feet. She rubs her wand with her thumb in small, nervous circles.

Malfoy looks up at her. "Do I look like a tracking hound to you, Granger?" There is a cool scorn in his voice that she recognizes- a smug lilt to his aristocratic accent and she grabs on to the sense of comfortable antagonism that it awakens in her.

"Then how did you know how many there were? How did you know they had K-kingsley? Why did you lie to me?" The words choke out before she can stop them. Then, again, the question forces itself out, "Where are they taking him?" Like she doesn't already know. Like there is hope for him.

"I am not an oracle for your fancy, Mudblood," and his pale gaze slides past her and around to the fireplaces. "What I know and what I don't know are not known for naught."

She furrows her brow and raises her wand at him. "How did you know how many there were?" she asks and her voice is cold. This is important. This might be an answer that she can use. She just watched their best hope get taken away by a pack of werewolves. She doesn't want to be fucked with. Not now.

"I see many things. You'll have to be more specific." He eyes the tip of her wand the way one watches a fly on a windowsill.

"Don't play dumb, Malfoy. You know what I'm talking about." and she isn't sure that she could tell him out loud if she wanted to. The words for what she means to say don't exist. Not in any language she knows, anyway. How does one sum up the witness of atrocity? One doesn't, of course, and that is the most violent part of it- the part that can't ever be put into words.

"What, pray, do you think you will do with that wand that will make me answer you?"

The question catches her off guard, but he hasn't moved from his place on the floor and suddenly she realizes that she must look like she's threatening him. Then, she wonders if maybe this isn't such a bad thing, since he dragged her across the floor not five minutes ago. Hermione is in a place where paths fork. She has two options: She can be _sure_ that the information she wants from Malfoy comes, and quickly. She's never cast an unforgivable before, detests dark magic as a rule, but this is a war, and she has never had trouble mastering spells in a pinch. The boy- man- on the ground in front of her is the first one to teach her hatred, the first one to teach her a slur that she has spent the last seven years trying to rip out of her own veins, the one who set up Dumbledore to die. If there was ever someone beyond redemption, who was not worth her mercy, it is him. But she has a second option, too, and soon as she knows that she has a choice, she makes her decision.

She lowers her wand, but only just so the point is fixed on his still-blue toes. She doesn't do it for _him._ She doesn't do it because he is worth saving, because he isn't. She does it because he is not worth ruining herself over and she doesn't want the stink of dark magic on her for the sake of someone like _him_.

"I won't do anything to you," she finally says, "I just don't want you to grab me again and I don't trust you."

He considers this for a moment and doesn't answer.

"But please, Malfoy," she grinds the words out between clenched teeth.

"One question." His eyes are off of her again and she doesn't know what he's looking at, but his gaze is flicking back and forth like he can read secrets on the walls behind her.

She doesn't need long to figure out how she'll spend her one question. "How did you know how many were coming?" She repeats. Malfoy's posture changes so that he is turned slightly away from the dark corner directly behind Hermione and she feels a prickle along the nape of her neck that she associates with being watched. She flicks her eyes back to the corner, but doesn't see anything in the shadow.

"I guessed, Mudblood," he says distractedly, and he is looking at the blood again, dipping his fingers into it, "Ask your dark friend if you want to know more."

He doesn't answer anything she says after that, although she asks again and again what does he mean? who is he working for? why was he a prisoner? what the hell does he mean by _dark friend_? Does he mean Kingsley? If so, this is racist in a whole new way that he has never mentioned before.

"We should leave," he stands so suddenly she takes a step back and her breath catches in her throat. If he notices, he doesn't give any sign. "We are not safe here."

"Well, obviously," she huffs. She doesn't know where to take him, though. She knows she was supposed to take him to Azkaban, but that was before things got quite so complicated. For now, though, she doesn't know what to do. She can't take him back to Andromeda's, and she hasn't been to any of the other safe houses that are currently in use. She has to contact Lupin before she does anything else with Malfoy. She has to tell them about Kingsley so they can mount a rescue and set things straight once and for all. "Come here," she says and holds out her arm. "I'll take you to a safe house."

He loops his hand around the cloth of her jumper like he doesn't want to touch her. Like she is contagious. She grinds her teeth together and her lips thin.

* * *

><p>When they arrive at Grimmauld place, it is as silent as death, which is exactly what she was hoping for. He doesn't complain when she raises her wand and stupefies him before running up to the second floor to look for first aid supplies because she can't just leave him broken up, but she can't leave him on his own, either. He isn't exactly trust-inspiring. When she returns with an armful of bandages, he is precisely where she left him, and she lets out a shaky breath before she ennervates him.<p>

"Here," she says, and shoves an armful of cloth at him. He inspects the bundle warily before he takes it and then pulls out the the metal first aid kit that she was lucky enough to find in the bathroom on the second landing. "There's a bottle of dittany, some wound cleaner, and some bruise cream, too. I don't know much about healing spells, past some basics, but those should take care of the worst of it." _Hopefully,_ she doesn't say. "You probably shouldn't, uh, shower until your feet are a normal color again," she is reaching back in her head for everything she has ever learned about first aid magic. "They look a bit frost-bitten to me. I'll fix your face for you, if you want."

He gives her a look that says quite plainly that he would rather not, but her wand is out and between her fingers, and so he gingerly, grudgingly, opens his mouth.

She tries not to gag. It is not that he is simply missing teeth. There are jagged chunks of teeth still embedded in his gums and other spaces where there are no teeth left at all. All things considered, though, the damage is much worse to his top teeth than to his bottom ones, and his right bottom molars are almost completely undamaged, although they are as pink as his other teeth. Hermione has seen a mouth or two in her time. She can remember summers spent reading in the chair in her mother's office, leafing through Dental Reference Books and asking questions about gum disease. She tries not to think about what her parents would say if they could see Malfoy's mouth now. Every time she thinks about them, a knife twists in her chest and she must repeat to herself that they are safe in Australia like it is a prayer.

She looks away from him and breathes through her mouth. The stench of rot is overpowering. She steels herself, looks back and says "Episkey," with a wave of her wand. The split in his lip mends and a chunk of tooth is pushed out of his fast-repairing gumline. He prods it into his palm with his tongue and opens his mouth again.

She turns her head to the left to breathe shakily before returning her attention to him, trying not to inhale in his face, lest she actually vomit. God, he smells horrible. "Episkey," she says again and she can hear his jaw popping back into place with a nauseating _click._ "Episkey," and his nose straightens with a series of small crunches as cartilage shifts over bone. "Episkey," and the thin stream of blood leaking from a gash on his sunken cheek sews itself shut and the cheek beneath it re-inflates.

After forty five minutes and six more castings, his face is almost visible under a thick layer of bruising, although she still isn't sure she would recognize him. "I don't think I'll be able to do anything about the teeth, though," she adds apologetically. "I mean, I could grow them out, but maybe if you just rinse your mouth out with Dittany, it'll be better. So they aren't jagged, you know."

He nods mutely, but doesn't move.

"Do you want to change?" She suggests, rolling her eyes. She glances at the clock. She has to contact the order to tell them about Kingsley, but she doesn't want to do it in front of Malfoy.

He just stares at her, blank as a board.

"Well, go on," she nods towards the bathroom door, "I'm not going to wait all night."

He finally goes to change and she floos Andromeda.

"Oh, Hermione," it is Tonks who answers. "I was so worried! Mum said you brought back a death eater? Wherever you are, don't move. Security has been compromised and the floo network isn't safe."

"I found Draco Malfoy. Some Death Eaters were taking him somewhere."

"That doesn't matter now. The ministry has fallen. Kingsley's been taken. We shouldn't be talking on this right now."

"I know. About Kingsley."

This seems to catch Tonks off guard. "What do you mean?"

"I was there." And she tells Tonks as much as she can about what she overheard from the closet at the ministry. "And so now he's changing in the bathroom."

"You left your back open to him?" Tonks roars, her eyes suddenly wide with fear.

Before anything else can happen, Tonk's face has left the fire and she is standing beside Hermione her wand drawn. "Where is he?"

"I'm here, cousin." Comes the smooth reply.

Malfoy has clearly used a liberal amount of the bruise cream, because his face is clear and he looks almost like the boy she knew in school. He is gaunt, and the hollows around his eyes make him seem more animal, more skeleton, than man, and his lips are still concave around an empty mouth of broken teeth, but he looks remarkably at ease in Ron's shirt (too long), Harry's pants (too short), and socks she found bunched under Ron's bed (but seem to fit him fine). Like he has owned every article of clothing all his life. Even broken, he retains a grace that she can only envy in a small corner of her mind that is reserved for such vacuous thoughts, even at times like this.

Tonk's wand is on him. "Give me a reason, Malfoy. A single one."

He just stares back at her. Hermione is invisible in the room behind the older witch. She eases her own wand out of her pocket. Later, she won't remember why she thought that taking out her wand would accomplish anything. By this point, she is so thoroughly confused about Malfoy- she doesn't trust him, but she doesn't quite _not_ trust him, either- that she isn't sure she would use her wand on him unless he decides to lunge at them.

"To what, cousin?" He asks, his head tilted gently to the side. His voice is lazy and he doesn't even look down at her wand. His eyes are on her face and they are dull as ditchwater, but sparkling with something like fury.

"Don't call me that!" Tonks snarls. Her hair is turning black at the roots and her ears are sharpening into points.

He smiles like a shark, and his jagged teeth are brown in the glint of the fire. "But that is what you are, cousin. Blood, you know, is thicker than-"

And with that, Malfoy is bound where he stands and he smacks his head against a bookshelf as he falls to the left. The face Hermione had so recently spent the better part of an hour trying to fix slams so hard into the fireplace that bits of brick chip off.

Tonks does not spare a look for Hermione, but says, very calmly, "I will take him to Azkaban and we will discuss your actions once I am back at the safehouse." As Tonks pulls the now unconscious Malfoy into a standing position by his ropes, Hermione watches the thin cords of muscle stand out along her arms. She is so much stronger than she looks, that Hermione marvels at her capableness. There is a snap as Tonk and Malfoy disapparate and then Hermione is alone in Grimmauld place.

There is something on the carpet that catches her attention and she stoops to pick up three wet pieces of tooth Malfoy lost when he fell. She pockets them because she isn't sure what else she should do with them and stares into the happily blazing fire, trying to collect her thoughts before she returns to Andromeda and Ted Tonks' house


	5. The Writing on the Wall

**Chapter 5**

Hi, guys. Sorry this chapter is a bit late- I've been swamped at work this week.

To those of you who reviewed: Thank you so very, very much for your support and feedback.

It really means the world to me and is, once again, the only reason why I keep updating this or any of my stories at all.

* * *

><p><strong>Friday, October 18th.<strong>

She hasn't been asleep for three hours before Ginny is gently shaking her awake. "Lupin's here," the younger girl says quietly. Her bright brown eyes are red-rimmed from crying. Everyone has been taking the news of Kingsley hard, but she had been too exhausted do much more than relay a very abbreviated version of the story to Ginny and Molly before she collapsed in her bed. She hasn't seen her boys since she got back, and she hopes that they return before news about the ministry gets out.

She nods and swings her feet around the edge of the bed. It's a cold night, but she doesn't even look for a pair of socks. She just grabs the little bottle off of the nightstand and pads down the two flights of stairs between her room and the kitchen.

"Hermione," Lupin greets. He looks awful, like he hasn't slept in a month. "I need you to tell me-"

"Here," she holds out the vial for him. "My memories. You can see it all for yourself. It will be more accurate than a verbal account, at any rate."

He looks down at the vial. "Are you sure that you want to give me that, Hermione?"

"I don't need it to be crystal clear for me." she shrugs, "I know the facts of it well enough," _and I want to forget about it_ she doesn't say. This month has been horrible enough without that floating around in her head.

He stares at the vial for a moment longer, but hesitantly takes it from her. He waves his wand over it, and murmurs a spell Hermione has never heard before. Suddenly, there are two vials in his hand. He passes one to her and pockets the other. "You should at least keep a copy of it," he tells her, "you may want it at some point in the future."

* * *

><p><strong>Tuesday, October 22nd. <strong>

It is 2:33 in the morning according to the clock above the doorframe. Hermione is sitting at the shining wooden table in Andromeda's kitchen and there is cup of tea in her hands that went cold half an hour ago.

Ginny is asleep in their room upstairs, but Hermione's sleep is fitful these days and sometimes, when she wakes up in the dark, she is positive that she is back in that pitch black cell. Ginny can't sleep with the lights on, and Hermione doesn't know how to say that she can't sleep in the dark. As a result, Hermione has started going to bed after the sun has come up, reading at the brightly lit kitchen table until the red eye of dawn opens on the horizon.

She would never thought herself such a coward as this- even when she was little she wasn't afraid of the dark, but it seemed to leech into her bones while she was in that stinking cell and she hasn't been able to shake it off yet. She hasn't told anyone in the house about it, of course- she knows, logically, that this sort of thing generally gets better with time, and so she will give it time before she asks Andromeda for some Dreamless Sleep or tries to ask Ginny if maybe they could leave a light on in the corner.

But she is getting increasingly sick of giving herself _time_.

It's been five days since Kingsley was taken by the werewolves, seven days since she has seen or heard from Harry or Ron, and almost a month since she left that dark room and still she isn't sure if she is still trapped in the dark somewhere, just too mad from loneliness or fear to realize that this is all a dream. Nothing but the passage of time, and all the waiting she has never wanted to do in the hours between.

There hasn't even been a battle to distract her. Not that she anticipates they will let her fight, of course, but the death eaters are quiet wherever they are, and the order is still reeling from losing the ministry. The most interesting thing that has happened in the last week has been the shutdown of the floo network, and that only took Ted about five minutes.

She wishes that Harry and Ron were here. She has never missed their presence as much as she misses them now. She figured, of course, that she wouldn't hear from them once word got out about the ministry. She knows it is too dangerous from them to risk exposure and she can only hope that Ron is doing whatever it takes to keep Harry from trying to run off to help.

The days are starting to get shorter and the nights are starting to get longer. She has spent five long nights sitting at this table with cold cups of chamomile-lavender tea and the books about dark magic that she'd taken from the ministry before it fell to the death eaters. Tonight she has a book from the stack confiscated from the Malfoy estate, and this one is a theory book, called Bestia Calumniatorem, but it sits unopened on the table before her.

Absentmindedly, she pulls Malfoy's teeth from her pocket. She hasn't been carrying them around on purpose- it's just that these are the same jeans she was wearing when she found him, and she forgot to take them out. She doesn't know what she'd do with them, anyway, and so she rubs her thumb over them in the palm of her hand. Left maxillary first bicuspid, pink and dragging root; left maxillary cuspid a cleaner removal and yellowing where the tooth once met the gum line; about 80% of a lateral incisor, jagged as a sawblade; and a crescent of what looks like it might be a central incisor.

She knows these teeth- remembers them from diagrams in her mother's office where she would sit after school in the big dentist chair, reading books or doing her homework. As she remembers this, a lump blocks her throat and her eyes sting.

She drags her knuckles angrily across her wet cheeks and murmurs a warming charm over her tea, but then it is too hot again. Sighing, she pulls her book closer to her, opens it to her place, and begins to read.

* * *

><p><strong>Friday, October 25th.<strong>

The bark on the tree she is hiding behind explodes in a shower of woodchips, and she fires a spell back blindly. She is not here to fight. They have made that abundantly clear. She is here to put some of her new learning into practice. There have been five counted uses of the Fire Beast spell since Fred died and Hermione thinks she might have found a counter-curse.

On her left, Mallory Bullstrode fires off a string of spells that Hermione has never heard before. Her short black hair is plastered to her round and shining face, but she looks almost serene in the light of magic around them. Bullstrode is her keeper for the evening, along with a mediwitch Hermione has never seen before named Nanita, with thick dark hair and a round, earnest face. The mediwitch- Nan, as she likes to be called- is somewhere close by, but Hermione doesn't know where.

There is a ear-splitting scream.

Bullstrode grabs her arm and tugs her fiercely in the direction of the scream. It is not hard to spot a giant beast made of bright blue flame in a dark forest at night and the mediwitch is beside her as she screams incantation after incantation. Hermione inhales smoke that smells like skin, "_Extinxero Iumentum_!" she chokes out and the beast raises its head to look at her, one massive paw still pinning its burning, screaming victim to the forest floor. Its eyes meet hers, two balls of blue-black flame sizing her up like a meal or a challenger. Then it turns away, raises its paw, takes one step away, and vanishes.

The mediwitch rushes forward to the still burning body and before Hermione can run to join her, Bullstrode has a firm grip on her arm again and is dragging her away from the thick of battle, shouting cursing wildly as they go. When they are a safe distance away, Bullstrode turns to face her.

Mallory Bullstrode is a small, thickset woman, and Hermione is at least a whole head taller than she is, but she can command a presence when she wants to, and Hermione has no trouble paying attention. "What is the counter-curse?" she asks. Her voice is high and breathless, her lips are pale pink, almost like she is wearing makeup. Her eyes are burning with what Hermione thinks might be glee or what the hit wizards sometimes call "Wandlight."

Hermione repeats the counter curse.

"Extinxero Iumentum?" repeats Bullstrode, waving her wand in a tight arch.

"ExTINxero IuMENtum," Hermione corrects, "and don't wave your wand so much. It's more straight down and then twist it at the handle. Yes. That was better."

"What will happen if it doesn't work?"

"Well," Hermione wrinkles her nose, "Either nothing at all or, if the Ignis Manticora thinks you aren't serious, it might change targets to you, but I don't know if that actually happens or if it was just an embellishment by the writer in the Bestia Calumniatorem."

Bullstrode gives her a hard look, "Right, well. I was supposed to take you back once you figured it out, and take over if they try to use that spell again, but I'm not risking getting killed if I don't do it right. Besides," she gives Hermione a ghost of a smile, "I have a feeling that you'll fight me if I try to bring you back to 'Dromeda's place."

Hermione smiles back and doesn't have to answer.

Mallory rolls her eyes, "You Gryffindors are all the same. Self-sacrificing ninnies, the lot of you," but there is no heat to her words and there is a wolfish grin on her face. "Only stick close to me, right? Dawlish will have my hide if you die on my watch. I'll cover you, you cover Nan, yeh?"

Hermione nods, grins, and then they are rushing back towards the mediwitch, spells flying as they go.

* * *

><p><strong>Friday, October 25th, much later.<strong>

When she gets back to Andromeda's later that night, she is dragging her feet, there is a deep cut across one cheek, and she smells like burnt skin, but she is happy. She ended the Ignis Maticora three times that night, and two of the curse victims had survived. One was Justin Finch-Fletchly and the other was a middle-aged woman who she hardly recognized under burns. Both were in St. Mungo's, but Nan, the mediwitch, was hopeful that Justin would be released the next morning and the older witch sometime that week.

She is bone-tired, but decides that she needs to shower, lest she get blood and dirt all over her bed. She stands under the hot water for five minutes before she begins to nod off, which she takes as the signal to get out and go to sleep.

She is toweling off her hair when she glances in the fogged-over bathroom mirror. She can make out her silhouette, pale and distorted in the mist, but behind her, there is a tall, dark shadow that seems to suck the light out of the room. The lights above her flicker.

* * *

><p><strong>Sunday, October 27th.<strong>

She gets an owl. Lupin asks if she would be willing to sit for a meeting tomorrow. She owls back immediately, says yes. She is glad that _something_ is happening.

"What was that about?" Ginny asks. She has been as bored as Hermione has been and the owl arrived while they were playing exploding snap.

"I don't really know." she replies.

* * *

><p><strong>Monday, October 28th.<strong>

Remus is sitting across from her at the kitchen table. Dawlish is on his left. Hermione hasn't seen John Dawlish since the last battle she fought before she was captured, and that memory seems to come to her from the other side of a gulf of darkness, distant and faded.

Dawlish has small, sharp blue eyes and hair cropped close to his head. He is neither thick nor thin, and there is a chip in his nose that looks like a bit of the bridge was blown off by a curse. Other than that, though, he looks much like a normal, middle aged man.

No one is smiling. She wonders when the last time she actually smiled was. Maybe with Harry and Ron. Maybe even before that. She doesn't remember. Her old DADA professor scrapes his hand across his face, dragging down to rest on the table. The wedding band on his left hand glints in the light.

"What's going on?" She asks slowly, filled with trepidation. "Are Harry and Ron," she licks her lips, her eyes dart around the kitchen. "Are they alright? Did something happen?"

She is positive that if something happened to Harry, the entirety of Wizarding England would know about it already, but she can think of no reason for the head of the auror office and the acting head of the Order of the Phoenix to call a private meeting with her. She can think of no other reason for the silencing charms Remus placed around the kitchen or the care that Dawlish put into ensuring that they were alone in the room. The sneakoscope is silent in the center of the table between them.

"As far as we know, they're fine, Hermione."

So Remus has heard from them, then. She tries not to be too jealous of this. "What is this meeting about, then, professor?"

He has told her to call him by his given name over and over again, but old habits die hard. The two across from her exchange a glance, like they are silently discussing who will speak next.

"Is it about Malfoy, then?" she asks because, while she knows her curse breaking work is important, coming up with one counter curse two weeks ago isn't enough to earn her this kind of special treatment. "I've already told you everything that I can remember and you've seen my memories." She addresses Lupin, although she is sure that Dawlish has also seen her memories by this point. Maybe they've called her in now because they want to know how Malfoy knew how many were there, or maybe they want to know why she didn't try to help Kingsley. She's been wondering that herself since it happened, and she is sure that Malfoy should not have been enough to stop her. She'll wait to be asked to tell them this, though, and she'll try not to embarrass herself too much when she owns up to her own cowardice.

"Of course, Hermione," Lupins voice is terse, but not unkind. "But things are still developing, you know. You see," he leans forward on his elbows, "Malfoy has been a bit uncooperative."

Dawlish lets out a snort and Hermione's eyes flicker toward his face.

"Ok," she replies slowly.

"Uncooperative is an understatement," explains Dawlish. His thick hands are spread on the table in front of him, his wand trapped between the wood of the table and his right palm. He rolls it vacantly. "Hasn't so much as told us his bloody name."

"Was Veritaserum uneffective?" she asks.

"You might say that, yeah," Dawlish replies and the way he says it confuses her.

"Why?"

"Bastard's a ruddy good occlumens. Veritaserum, our best legilimens. Nothing. He's a fucking locked box."

The last words are spat like a curse, and there is something they are not telling her, but she is clever enough to know what it is already. "You've been torturing him." Her voice is even when she speaks, and she meets Dawlish's gaze. For a long moment, no one says anything. They weren't planning on telling her, then.

Her mind flickers to the fiery manticore and she remembers the smell of Justin's hair on fire. Fred screaming. She remembers Hannah dying in her arms. They will never recover Luna's body. So many bodies. Bodies to pile high. Bodies to bury. Bodies to rot in dark, dark rooms under ancient stones.

So what if they've been torturing him? He is a death eater. He is the enemy. She imagines his face, cold and sharp as it had been in hogwarts, sneering out at her from behind a beaten-steal mask, but then the vision shifts and he is looking up at her from a tangle of ropes and dead bodies, and his face is smashed in and his nose is broken and pushed to one side and his eyes have no light in them. She has been carrying his three broken teeth in the pocket of her jeans for more than a week now because she keeps forgetting to take them out and now they feel like they are burning through the cloth and into her skin. They feel like accusation.

A cold weight settles in her stomach and her skin feels so filthy and so tight across her bones that she wants to scrape it all off of her. "He's been in your prison for what? ten days and you've been torturing him this whole time. When did you realize that he wouldn't talk? That veritaserum wouldn't work and your legilimens were powerless? Did you at least wait a day, or was it only a couple of hours after Tonks brought him in? I can't imagine you waited any longer than that."

"Hermione," Remus' ragged voice comes to her like a supplication, "No one's tortured anyone. I'll admit that we've been using different interrogation methods, but-"

Dawlish doesn't look away. His eyes are small, wet, and dark, but there is conviction behind them. "I do what I need to do to keep this country safe, Granger. This is a _war,_ girl. I don't expect you to understand, but-"

"You think I don't _know_ this is a war? " Her voice is calm and her whole body feels like it has been plunged into ice water, she wants to rip out her veins and roll them into a ball and shove them at Dawlish. _Look at this, you old monster_, she wants to say_, there is darkness in my veins now and your war put it there, _"But if you're here talking to me, obviously your grand plan to force information out of a person has failed. Do you honestly think that the wizarding community backs this sort of treatment of our prisoners? Do you think _Harry_ would support this? You are aware, I'm sure, how often torture results in false confessions, aren't you? Since that is the case, I can only assume that you are doing this for your own sadistic-"

"You were classmates with the death eater, but you aren't in school anymore, girl. Some things are bigger than-"

The idea that she is angry due to some misplaced sense of nostalgia causes her spine to stiffen. "Mr. Dawlish," she hisses, "I assure you that there is no love lost between your prisoner and myself. Has it ever occurred to you that torturing people for information is inherently wrong, base, and brings us down to the level of those we are trying to fight?"

On the table, the sneakoscope begins to spin, but because it doesn't make a sound, none of them notice it.

But Dawlish has thinned his lips into a cold grin. "Remus mentioned your _bleeding heart_, but if you're so clever, what do you think we should do? He's got information. He's _one of them. He's a bad guy_ and the longer he sits all happy shut up in his comfy cell, the more good guys are dying. So, what do you think, Granger? How should we proceed now?"

"Well, for starters, There is no difference between _us_ and _them_ if this is how we act! There is no 'good guy' or 'bad guy' if this is what war is. I'd realize that repeating the same method for three weeks and expecting a different result each time is utterly pointless and so moronic that it borders on lunatic."

Lupin makes a sound like a cross between a sigh and her name, but Dawlish raises his meaty left hand to silence him.

"Let's say we've done that now, Granger. What's the next step? Should we try to educate him? Teach him all about how he's been a very, very bad boy? This is the brat who lead Death Eaters into Hogwarts when he was sixteen. His mind's been made up since before any of this started." Dawlish is sneering at her, she ignores him.

"There's got to be something he wants. Offer a trade. He's used to comfortable living. Offer him benefits if he cooperates. Come on, Mr. Dawlish, rack your brains for a few minutes to consider the social implications of your behavior. It shouldn't be too painful, even for you.""

"What sort of benefits do you recommend, then?" He counters, ignoring her jab.

She shrugs, "Let him see his friends. We've got Marcus Flint still. Offer to let him see his old school buddy if he tells us what we want."

Dawlish shakes his head, "Won't work."

Her temper flares again. Dawlish is underestimating the power of friendship and that insults her on a personal level. "And why not?"

"He was sharing a cell with Flint and Sheridan Webb two nights ago."

"Why?" she cuts in, "I thought Azkaban wasn't keen on cell-sharing since the breakout."

He gives her a long look before answering, clearly annoyed at being interrupted, "First of all, that is not supposed to be civilian knowledge and I don't have to justify our actions to a child. Anyway, we thought he'd talk to Webb and Flint. We can get information out of both of them. Show him a bit of the good life before we got back to work on him. Encourage him to talk."

She can't help the disgusted look that crosses her face, "That's sick. That's really, really sick. This is common practice for you people, isn't it? You've got it down to a science."

"I don't hear you complaining when you fall asleep, safe in a warm bed, under our protection. Don't see you getting all upset every time we stop a battle before it even starts. This is the price of freedom, _girl_." His voice is lowering into growl now. "I have stopped curses and wars that would give you nightmares for the rest of your life. I've seen things that would turn your delicate little stomach."

"So why didn't it work, Mr. Dawlish?" Her voice is getting louder. On the table, the sneakoscope cracks and stops spinning as suddenly as it started. Her hands are curled into fists in her lap. "Why didn't you get your information from Flint and Webb? Didn't they talk?"

Dawlish sneers at her like they've been playing chess and he just saw a brilliant move where she left herself open. "Because the dead don't talk, _girl._"

This catches her off guard. "What?" Her eyebrows knit together.

"He killed them. Both of them."

"What? How?" she repeats. There is a piece missing and she hates her brain for choosing now, of all times, to slide back into the dark.

"He was alone with them for three minutes while the guard changed at midnight. When the fourth shift got there, they reported hearing screaming and a snapping sound. When they got to the holding cell, Flint was dead."

Her eyes drift down the the cracked sneakoscope. "How did he die?" she asks, and tries not to guess.

"Flint's neck was snapped."

"What happened to Webb?" she asks even though she is not sure she wants to know. She is starting to wonder if curiosity isn't a curse or a sickness inside of her.

"He died on the way to the apparition point on the island to take him to St. Mungo's. Bled out."

She doesn't have an answer to that.

"That's why we're here, Hermione," says Remus before Dawlish can say anything else. He looks slightly green and more than a bit upset.

"Because Webb died? That doesn't make any sense."

"No," says Dawlish, "because now we know what he wants."

"What?" she asks because she is Hermione Granger and she can't keep herself from asking questions, even when she knows she should.

"He spelled it out for us. Blood was all over the cell. Both guards on duty have asked for time off. Medical leave for the rest of the month. He wrote it out in Webb's blood on the walls when the guards took Webb out for transport."

"Then it should be easy," she retorts, "whatever he wrote out, just offer him that if he cooperates."

"That's why we're here, Hermione," Lupin says again.

Dawlish looks very seriously at her, then. All mirth and rage gone from his face, "He wrote out, 'Get Granger'."


	6. The Cell

**A/N: **To those of you who have reviewed this or any of my other stories: I love you. I'm thinking of whipping up some bonus content for people who review a lot. Is that acceptable on this site, does anyone know? I just don't really have enough words of gratitude to express how thankful I am for your support. I really wouldn't be doing this AT ALL if it weren't for you.

T/W: Implied torture

**Chapter 6: The Cell**

* * *

><p><strong>Friday, November 1st.<strong>

It is just past midnight and Hermione is sitting at the table again, eating a bowl of cereal and absent-mindedly practicing a wandless, nonverbal _lumos_ to herself. _Lumos!_ she thinks with as much ferocity as she can, and stares at her wand an arm's length away, but nothing happens. _Lumos_! the tip of her wand glows faintly, but other than that, nothing happens. _Lumos!_

A safe house in Southampton was raided three days ago, and since then Andromeda's house has seemed more like a meeting center than a quiet home in the country. It seems that Hermione is no longer the only one awake at night, and the two wizards sharing a bottle of Ogdens are talking quietly in the living room, but Hermione still has little trouble tuning them out to read. She isn't exactly complaining, though- it's nice to know that there are other living people close by. It makes everything seem more real.

The chair across from her scrapes back and Mallory Bullstrode sits heavily in it.

"Do you ever sleep?" Grumbles the short-haired witch.

Hermione smiles tiredly, "Sometimes. Do you?"

Mallory chuckles darkly and shrugs noncommittally, "Sure. When I've taken a potion or six."

Hermione winces sympathetically.

An awkward silence falls between them for sixteen ticks of the clock above the doorframe.

"You did well. Last week, I mean. In Galloway." Mallory stares down her long nose at Hermione, her expression is unreadable.

"Oh," Hermione can feel her cheeks reddening with pleasure, "Thanks."

"That was a good bit of magic."

"It was nothing," she mumbles to the table and her knuckles, "it was only a counterspell that I read about in this book on different types of arcane _Ingnibus._ It wasn't even that complicated to translate. Anyone with a passing knowledge of runes and latin could have figured it out."

"Right. Well, I've never studied runes. Thought they were a waste of time in school, and they weren't needed for auror training, so there you go. But, Igni_bus_?" echoes Mallory, her eyebrows rising slightly, "You mean that there's more than one firebeast spell?"

Hermione resists the urge to launch into a lecture about the various incarnations of sentient fire magic, and instead says, "Yes, but that counterspell should work for most of them."

"Well, that's something, then."

They are quiet for a few more moments and then Hermione asks, "What house were you in?" mostly to break the silence.

"Slytherin," is the immediate reply. Hermione makes a face and Mallory laughs. It is a light sound- a girlish giggle that hardly suits her harsh features. "All of you Gryffindors have the same reaction." She runs a hand through her hair and it stands up straight, which reminds Hermione of Harry, which hurts her heart. "We're not all, you know, fawning over the dark lord."

Hermione narrows her eyes.

"Oh, don't look at me like that."

"Fear of the name-"

"Yeah, yeah, I know, but you don't have to look at me like I'm going to hex you into next Tuesday. I'm a half blood, you know. They wouldn't want me, anyway."

"Volde-"

"Yeah, but I'm a pretty big fan of my mum, anyway, so all this 'away with the muggles' rubbish doesn't sit well with me." She scrunches her features in a way that reminds Hermione immediately of Crookshanks, and she finds herself liking this girl more and more by the second.

"Are you related to Millicent Bullstrode?" Hermione asks.

Mallory grins. "Yeah. She's my baby sister."

"She and Pansy Parkinson were close, weren't they?"

Mallory winces, "Yeah, they were. It came as quite a shock when she sided with her father, you know. She used to spend holidays with us before all of this started. The rest of my family's in hiding, of course, and my sister asked Pansy to come with her. It was a serious blow to Milly when she didn't even answer the owl."

Hermione feels a new and unexpected pity for Millicent Bullstrode unfurling in her chest.

"I'm sorry," she says simply, "I didn't know."

Mallory smiles gently, "Of course not. You Gryffindors have always tended to keep to yourself. Anyway, about that counter-curse."

"What about it?"

"Can you teach it to me?"

"Of course," Hermione is just glad that all her reading is turning out to be useful.

"Great," Mallory's chair scrapes the floor as she stands, "Let's go."

"Now?" Hermione had assumed this was a hypothetical request, for some yet-determined point in the future, and not to be executed at twelve-twenty-four in the morning.

"Sure," Mallory shrugs, "I'm not going to sleep anytime soon. Are you?"

"No," Hermione replaces her bookmark in the book, "I guess not. Let's go."

* * *

><p><strong>Tuesday, November 5th.<strong>

"Why do you actually have to go?" Ginny asks watching Hermione in the mirror from her own bed. "Yourself, I mean."

"I already told you," Hermione sighs as she attempts to tame her hair back from her face and into a tight bun. _Don't give him anything to grab hold of, Granger_, Dawlish had warned the day before. _You AREN'T going to get close enough for him to grab you, but if you muck up badly enough, the less he can grab, the better._ "They tried that. Polyjuiced an Auror to look like me, but he didn't buy it."

"I'll be with her, Ginny." Mallory is seated on Hermione's bed. "Well, at least as long as I can. Dawlish thinks Malfoy's going to want to talk with you alone." She waggles her eyebrows as though she'd just said something scandalous, instead of something mildly upsetting for everyone in the room.

"Grand." Ginny says and rolls her eyes, "Yeah, brilliant. Leave Hermione Granger alone with a crazy guy who killed the last two people he was left alone with. Also, not to mention that he is a Death Eater, an asshole, and a-"

"I'm not going to be in the cell with him," Hermione sighs and gives up on smoothing out her hair. She would very much like a bottle of sleakeasy's right now, but hair products, and cosmetics in general, are difficult to buy, and out of her price range now, anyway. All potions ingredients are in short supply these days. Death Eaters take what they can when they want it and the Order buys the rest, which means that there is little left over for unnecessary products, so she does her best with a wet comb and manual labor. It isn't enough, but it will have to do.

"You should just cut it," suggests Mallory cheerfully from the bed, "much easier. And you've got a cute face. You could pull it off. Short hair, I mean."

* * *

><p>Dawlish is waiting for them when Mallory and Hermione walk into the kitchen. He looks her over once, nods sharply, and pulls a wad of cloth out of his pocket. He unwraps a spiny looking seashell.<p>

"We've got a minute or two before it activates," he tells them, checking his wristwatch. "So let's go over a few things before we get there. We're going to be met at the apparition point by two guards, who will escort us into the compound. Under no circumstances are you to wander off on your own, Granger," he gives her a hard look. "And try not to give the guards who meet us your speech about interrogation techniques. These witches and wizards deal with bullshit every day of their god damned lives and they're going out of their way to show us around."

Hermione opens her mouth to tell him that the prisoners that are being tortured almost certainly have it harder than their guards, but Mallory elbows her sharply in the side and so she holds her tongue.

"They'll collect your wand and run some positive ID tests just to be safe, and then they'll take you to the holding cell. Again, no bleeding heart antics, Granger. They'll just waste time. You'll have half an hour to talk, but you can leave whenever you want if you start to get twitchy. Just don't, for the love of Merlin, get within arm's reach of him. Ask him the questions we talked about, and then get out of there. We don't know what he's capable of, or what he wants from you. This is a _preliminary meeting_. We _don't_ negotiate with terrorists, Granger, so don't ask him what he wants in exchange for his cooperation." He glances at his watch. "Right, time to go. Everyone, get a finger on the murex."

"The what, Dawlish?" Tonks is suddenly leaning against the doorframe. Her hair is bubblegum pink today.

Hermione and Mallory obediently put one finger on the shell in Dawlish's palm.

"The shell. The shell is called a murex. It's a Lace Murex." the auror growls, "And what are you doing here, Tonks?"

"Came to have a chat with my mum, and figured I'd see our brave interrogators off. Since when do you know about seashells?"

Tonks' cheeks are pink and she has a large mug of tea in one hand, and Hermione's mind alights on the change. "I thought you preferred coffee, Tonks?" she asks before she can stop herself.

The smile widens on Tonks' face and she looks like she is about to say something when Hermione feels the pull behind her navel and then she is gone in a whirl of color.

* * *

><p>Hermione is cold and wet.<p>

She has been cold and wet for the last half of an hour, at least. The apparition point is, apparently, only above water at low tide. When they arrived at the island estate of Azkaban, they found themselves standing thigh-deep in ice-cold water, and all three began splashing loudly toward the gray waiting figures on the shore.

Everything on the island is gray, the great squat structure of Azkaban a dark gray across a smudged gray sky, and surrounded by water that is such a deep gray that it is almost back. It looks like a painting with all of the color sucked out of it. On either side of her, even the ruddy-faced Dawlish and Mallory's appraising blue eyes look washed out and dull as ditchwater.

When they reach the pebbled beach, they are all already shivering.

"Right this way, sir," says one of the guards to Dawlish with a sharp salute. The guard is a tall man in a very simple dark gray robe standing next to another very tall man in an identical very simply dark gray robe.

Hermione takes some solace in the knowledge that, even if the ministry is no longer under their control, Azkaban and its guards still are.

There is no time to cast a warming charm before they are lead inside. The building looks much smaller on the inside than it did on the outside. They are lead down a narrow hallway to a small room where Hermione is now sitting, shivering in a cold metal chair, hesitating to place her wand in the palm that is stretched out for it. The door they came in through is locked by the second gaurd.

'Hermione," whispers Mallory, who has already handed over her own.

Slowly, Hermione slides her wand into the outstretched hand and watches as it is dropped into a thick manila envelope with her name already written on the front. As soon as the envelope is closed again, it vanishes.

"This way, please," the second guard says, as he sticks a thick iron key directly into a patch of wall that is identical to every other section of wall around them. A door materializes and swings open with a scream of protest. Hermione walks through silently between Mallory and Dawlish. Once they are all through, the guard behind them closes the door, and locks them in. Hermione wonders how many doors like this they've passed already.

The hall around them is dark, lit by glowing bricks in the wall, spaced every few feet and radiating an eerie blue-gray light. They walk in silence for five minutes and as they walk, Hermione notices the sound of rushing water getting gradually louder as they walk on.

And then, very suddenly, Dawlish walks through a sheet of water that she had not noticed until it was directly in front of her. "Go on," Mallory whispers, giving her a small push on her back.

So Hermione walks through and the water chills her to the bone and Mallory emerges behind her, looking wet and annoyed. "I'll never get used to that," Mallory hisses. "It's to dispel illusions and so they can keep track of us. We'll leave footprints wherever we go while we're in here."

Hermione glances down and, sure enough, there are two sets of footprints ahead of her own feet.

* * *

><p>"If anything happens that makes you even remotely uncomfortable, loosen your grip on the ball," the guard recites as he holds a gray ball out to her. "It will lock down the cell, effectively ending communication and we will be alerted."<p>

She takes it. It is soft and warm and her fingers close around it.

"Just don't drop it," adds Mallory.

"What happens if I drop it?"

"The entire prison goes into lockdown mode," answers Dawlish, "which we would like to avoid if we would like to leave this week."

"Ah."

"There is a chair provided to you. The prisoner will be able to hear you and see you, but will be unable to approach the bars that serve as a physical barrier between you. Despite this, please do not pass the line on the floor. Please do not move the chair, pass anything to the prisoner, or approach the walls. When you are ready to leave, simply loosen your grip on the ball or transfer it to your other hand. If you do not signal for termination of the meeting before the allocated half hour, at the end of the allotted time, we will come in to collect you. Do you have any questions?"

"No."

They stop at a bare stretch of wall, where a different key causes yet another door to melt out of the stone. Hermione wonders how many doors they have passed like this without her noticing. The ball is held loosely in her right her fist as she walks through. The door closes behind her, the tumblers scream back into place, and then she is staring at a blank patch of wall. She clears her throat, turns, and walks on.

There is a chair in the center of the hallway and she approaches it. Beyond the chair, there is a thick black line painted on the dark gray flagstones of the floor. Her eyes trail down the hall and into the cell at the end of the hall. The cell is the same width as the rest of the hallway, about six feet across and maybe six feet deep. On one side of the cell, there is a simple cot with a mass of blankets on it. She thinks the cell is empty at first, but then what she mistook for blankets shifts and rises to a sitting position.

"Hello, Malfoy."

He doesn't answer at first, but this doesn't surprise her. The lights in the wall don't give her a good look into his cell, but his eyes are shining in her direction.

She sighs heavily, sits in the chair, and crosses her arms and legs. "We only have half an hour to talk, you know," she points out, "It won't do either of us any good if you just sit there not answering me." He scoots to the edge of his mattress and she can see his face now.

He looks much the same as when she last saw him, but his face is dark with fresh bruises.

"Did you break your nose again when you fell at Grimmauld place, or is it newer than that?"

He reaches up to his face and touches his nose, like he'd forgotten it was there at all, but he still doesn't answer.

She breathes out sharply through her nose. "This is absolutely ludicrous." She mumbles, more to herself than to anyone else. She is still shivering.

His eyes dart away from her then, and his face turns toward one corner. He nods at the corner, like he is greeting someone else, and then turns back to her. "Hello, Granger." he says around a mouthful of still-broken teeth.

Insanely, she thinks about telling him about the teeth in her trunk, like she should return them to him or at least let him know where they are. Clearly, she is more cold, tired, and stressed that she realized. "Why did you want to see me, Malfoy?" she asks instead.

"Because I have what you want and if I don't make demands, it looks suspicious if I am honest."

"Oh, please. I don't buy for a second that you only wanted to see me so that you look more honest. Don't say such stupid things. Don't embarrass us both with your idiocy."

He grins at her through the bars and in the shadows he looks like a beast, like a monster. _Oh grandmother,_ she thinks to herself because she is tired and cold_, what a big smile you have_. "Cleverest witch of our age."

But by the way he says it, she isn't sure that he is talking about her, or anyone else who is real for that matter.

"I have demands, if you want my help." His eyes are unfocused and he whispers something under his breath.

Hermione expected this. Was prepared, "We don't negotiate with terrorists," she says without any real passion or conviction. It sounds stupid, pigheaded and counterproductive even as she says it.

"Then all your friends will die," he replies simply. "I assure you that I do not ask for anything that cannot be given freely."

"So what are your demands?"

His lips move silently for a while, and he looks like he is trying to sort out what words he wants to use out loud. Like he needs to try them out before he can say anything. Finally, after a painfully long duration in which Hermione can only watching him mutter to himself like a madman,he says: "Exoneration. A full pardon."

She almost drops the ball. "You're asking quite a lot, Malfoy."

"You will learn, Granger, that I will always get what I want. Where's Potter?" The tone is stronger, more accusing now.

The question catches her off guard. This is the first time he has mentioned Harry and it is the last thing she expected him to do. In her head, she can hear the echo of Dawlish saying _Don't let him ask questions. He'll see it as you relinquishing power if he gets to ask questions_. "Why do you ask?"

"Because it is uncharacteristic of him to leave his favorite little mudblood all alone in the big bad world, and this is the second time I have seen you without the Boy Who Will Not Die. So, where is he?"

She tilts her chin up defiantly and is glad that he gave her a way to avoid the question. "I won't be called that, Malfoy."

"Why ever not? You have never been bothered by it like the Weasley fool. Is he still hanging on to your ankles, or have he and Potter finally come forward with their scandalous and illicit affair? A word, a name. Fear of the name, fear of the name, or have you forgotten the old fool's tattoo?"

She stares at him, open-mouthed. So he really is mad, then. She can't say she's sorry he's been unhinged, given what an ass he was before, and she doesn't miss his personality, but it is strange to see someone she thought she knew so visibly undone.

"Gaping suits fish and morons. Lets the flies in. But perhaps you are uncultured enough not to know that, Granger."

And just like that, he is back. She actually stands then, and takes a step forward because she is going to hex him for being such a sorry-

"Not past the line, Granger."

She pauses at his warning tone.

"And stop reaching for a wand that isn't there. You can't curse me with empty pockets and you'll only look a fool for trying. Don't embarrass us both with your idiocy. We only have half an hour to talk, you know."

"Right," she replied as coldly as she can, "then I'd like some information."

"What will you give me in return?"

"I don't have to give you anything." Another scripted line. When Dawlish watches the memory later, he should be pleased.

"Bleeding heart Granger doesn't want to help for the sake of helping?"

"I don't have a reason to help you."

"But what if I am in need of rescuing?"

The question is asked innocently enough, but it hits her like a slap in the face. It is her fault that he is in this situation- she knew that from the beginning, but now there is no doubt that he knows it, too. That he blames her. That her daring rescue in the wood was worse than worthless- he seems even worse off now than he was before she intervened. "Ask for something specific," she grinds out. Dawlish will kill her for this, but she can't help asking. "No guarantees about anything."

He thinks for a moment. "Teeth," he says eventually.

For one crazy moment, she thinks that he means the teeth that are still in her trunk but then he lifts his hand to his mouth and runs his index and middle fingers across his top row of broken teeth. His fingers are long and thin like spider legs.

"I cannot articulate the coordinates Dawlish wants without them."

"So, you're pretty much not going to tell me anything until you get your way."

"Cleverest witch of our age," he mocks again.

"Then we're done here," and she stands to go.

"But we are not yet out of time, Granger," he says softly. "I'm sure you are dying for some intellectual stimulation."

"That's presumptuous of you," she snorts.

"It was nice of your friend to come with you," he says suddenly, coldly, and she pauses mid-turn.

He can only mean Mallory, but how does he know that she is waiting? How, also does he know that Mallory is her friend- Hermione isn't even sure of that title herself. "How do you know?" she asks.

She sees him then as a beast, resting languid in a cell, but only until he finds a way out. The predator smiles a sharp-toothed smile. "I can smell him on you. Like I can smell your fear. Your shampoo. The coffee you drank this morning. I can smell it on anyone who comes in here or wherever I go when they take me out for our walks and our talks. Brand Rickman has a new daughter, wish him congratulations on my behalf on your way out. He hasn't been in to see me in days. Galba has a trouble with smoking. Like a chimney. Like a pyre. So tell me about the outside world. It's dull now. If a dog bites, they stop taking it out for walks and talks. So talk with me so that I may walk with you."

It isn't a really answer at all, but he did say _he_, which must mean he is speaking about Dawlish? "What do you want to know, Malfoy?"

"What month is it?"

She considers lying to him, but what is the advantage to that? He might be testing her. It seems the sort of thing he would do, just to see if she'll tell him the truth, and maybe she'll feel a bit less guilty for his current predicament if she gives him this much. "It's November."

"November," he echoes, "It's November." His eyes close and his head tilts back like he is savoring the taste of it in his mouth. She gives him a moment with this before his head snaps back down to her, "what day of the week is it, Granger?"

"First, one of mine." She snatches the chance before it is gone, "Why did you want to see me, of all people?"

His head tilts lazily back towards her, "Ah, now that is the question that is first on your tongue, of course. But I counter with this- whose sense of fair play and mercy should I trust? Certainly not a ministry auror's. Potter listens to you, councilwoman, and his approval is a war. So why not you? Why ever not you? Always you? There is the added benefit of the indisputable truth of your dear friend, proof of who you are. Besides," his eyes narrow like he has caught her in a trap that she still cannot see, "I am in need of rescuing."

She considers this for a moment. It is disappointing to know there isn't a bigger, more important reason, but maybe her importance to Harry is reason enough. She nods once. "It's a Tuesday."

"A Tuesday in November. November, the Tuesdayth."

"Malfoy," she asks and when he mutters to himself instead of answering she tries again, louder, "Malfoy."

But he is lost to her now, she knows, gone into his own mind and murmuring _November november november_ like it is his name. Like it is something he will forget it he ceases to speak it.

She shifts the ball to her other hand. He stops muttering to himself and he looks her in the face and his gaze doesn't waver. "Don't check the corners, Granger," he hisses so quietly that she has to hold her breath to catch the words, "I don't think he wants to be seen."

The door swings open. Malfoy's eyes follow their approach to her chair, his expression flat and his gaze is hard. _Grandmother, what big eyes you have_. She stands and walks toward the guards and ignores the prickling of his stare on the back of her head.

* * *

><p>The guards lead them next to a separate waiting room, through a door that materializes out of a blank, slimy stretch of wall. There is a stiff looking couch against one wall, and two large chairs and a potted plant against the other. Hermione gets her wand back from one of the guards and Dawlish immediately hands her a little bottle. She realizes that this is so she can siphon out her memory. The action is anticipated- they discussed it before any of this started- but it still catches her off guard. She had hoped she would have a bit longer before the events of the day were only a faded image in her mind. Dawlish is watching her expectantly.<p>

"Well I'm not going to do it with you watching," she huffs out.

He looks like he wants to argue with her, but with a grumble to himself, he turns his back on her. "Don't take too long," he growls, and goes out to join Mallory and the guards.

She pulls the long strand of memory out by the tip of her wand, and only spares a brief moment to herself to watch the swirling condense before Mallory sticks her head in. "Hermione? Dawlish is getting antsy. I think he has to use the loo."

Dawlish's response is loud and vulgar.

"Well if you don't," Mallory quips, "then I have utterly no idea why you are acting so impatient."

* * *

><p>They follow their own footprints out in a single file line again, and Hermione keeps her eyes glued to the floor, trying to match her footprints to those that she made on the way in. It is difficult to accomplish, though as her prints are merged in places with five other sets. The second set of prints she can identify besides own are Mallory's . They are small and pointed inwards. Third are Dawlish's, wide and flat, unevenly spaced. The two guards must be the fourth and fifth ones she sees, because they have the same treadmarks on them, since their boots look identical. The sixth set of prints is larger than the others, and wider spaced. This is when she realizes that there are only five of them walking down the corridor.<p> 


	7. The Thing Behind the Glass

**A/N:** In case you are wondering why this is late (or if you did not even realize it was late- guess what? It's late!): I THREW UP SEVEN TIMES YESTERDAY AND I STILL WENT TO WORK BECAUSE I AM JUST THAT INTENSE ABOUT TEACHING KIDS STUFF. Also, I had six classes in a row, so I had no time to work on editing during the day, and by the time I got home, I just wanted to wallow in my own ennui. Which I did. Anyway, I'm sorry.

**Chapter 7: The Thing Behind the Glass**

* * *

><p><strong>Friday, November 8th.<strong>

"I can go!" she shouts. Her hair is expanding around her face and her cheeks are heating up、but she doesn't notice and wouldn't care even if she did. "I went last time and it was _fine!"_

"Hermione, please relax," Lupin raises his hands in supplication. He is seated at the kitchen table. Dawlish is leaning against the counter, his arms folded across his chest and his legs spread in a battle stance. The window behind him is pitch black, even though it's only just after five. The days are getting shorter and the nights are getting colder.

"And a fat load of good you'll be to us if you decide to get yourself killed or captured!" Dawlish yells back. "Don't you understand? We need you for negotiations now!"

She is still standing in the doorway, where she has been for the last five minutes as the conversation has gotten more and more heated. She tried to be polite at first, she tried to _rationally_ and _calmly _explain to Dawlish that she didn't understand why she wasn't invited to the planning meeting, because she was as useful as the rest of them.

"You'll need me more if they use the manticora again! And I thought you didn't negotiate with _terrorists_, or has Malfoy been upgraded to just plain old torture victim?"

The last of the aurors who were spending the evening in the kitchen have disappeared to other rooms, carrying half-eaten sandwiches and scalding cups of tea. Dawlish is famed for his temper, and none of them want to feel the wrath of it. Hermione, on the other hand, doesn't give a fig what is reputation says. He is being stupid, and Hermione cannot abide stupidity.

"Bulstrode can do the wandwork, if need be," Dawlish barrels through the beginning of her diatribe. "But they won't be using it anymore since it didn't work in their favor last time!"

Hermione feels a quick sting of betrayal at this. But no, the logic in her brain pushes back, of course Mallory can fend off the fire beasts as well as she can. What Dawlish is saying makes sense, logically, but she can't stand the idea of being out of action for much longer. It has been three days since the last time she left the house and there isn't even anything new to read. Rage flares up again, and this time she hangs on to it. She is starting to feel alive again. Her brain is slowly spinning back into rotation. "And for Malfoy? Nothing to say to that?"

"Hermione," Lupin places a hand on her elbow, "Please. We're not asking you to sit here and do nothing. We need good wands on healing duty, too."

Dawlish grumbles something, but Hermione stops listening. There is a shape moving just beyond the window behind Dawlish. It's only a dark outline against the inky black, but she is sure that it is there, up against the glass.

Her wand is in her hand and she shouts "Protego!" just as the glass explodes inward. The power of her spell blasts Dawlish backwards. Lupin and Dawlish have their wands out and aurors are rushing back into the room. Spells are thrown out into the darkness, illuminating Andromeda's lawn in green and red light. A group runs out to check the lawn, but they find nothing. It is chalked up to an accident.

When the confusion dies down, Dawlish walks up to her, "Fast reflexes, girl," he commends, "I suppose I let my temper go. It wouldn't be the first time I...lost control like that. It wasn't very professional of me." He looks embarrassed and still angry. "My orders stand, but I shouldn't have..." he growls, looking for a word, "lost it like that. I'm sorry." The words seem to taste bad in his mouth, but he spits them out anyway, like penance.

She nods mutely. Dawlish claps her on the shoulder and edges past her into the living room to talk to a group of aurors who are waiting for him there. She lowers herself shakily into one of the chairs. The window has been repaired and she is alone in the kitchen. When she rubs her hands over her face, she realizes that they are shaking and so she clasps them around her wand. She rubs small circles around its base with her thumb so hard that the wood beneath her fingers bends gently.

She knows that whatever caused the window to break, it wasn't Dawlish. It wasn't even anything in the kitchen. It was something outside. She knows this because, for half a heartbeat, she saw it. A long and sharp looking ink-black hand reaching for Dawlish as the glass shattered around it.

* * *

><p>Sometime after midnight, Mallory slides into the seat across from her.<p>

"Hey," she says as she places her cup gingerly on the table. She glances at Hermione's face. "Ok, I know Dawlish can be scary when he's mad, but he gets over it pretty quick, you know."

"Hm?" Hermione looks up from her hands, confused by Mallory's words.

"I mean, you don't have to look so scared. I heard about the window thing," she nods at the window, "but I mean, there was this one time where he slammed his mug down so hard on the table that the handle broke and he punched the table. Broke two knuckles I think. It was hilarious. So, just relax, yeah?"

"Oh," Hermione realizes now that Mallory must think she is afraid of Dawlish or something else equally ridiculous. "Oh, no. That's not," but she trails off. How can she explain the hand she saw reaching through the window towards Dawlish without sounding absolutely crazy? The aurors searched the yard completely afterwards, and they hadn't found a thing. But Mallory is looking curiously at her.

"What," Mallory prods gently, "What happened?" She leans forward slightly.

"Just before Dawlish-"

"Ah! Shit!" Mallory jumps to her feet, slapping at her wrist.

"What? What is it?" Hermione is on her feet, too, and her wand is waving blindly around the kitchen.

"Ow! Fuck!" Mallory inhales sharply through her teeth and pulls her hand away from her wrist, revealing a deep cut, shining with thick red blood. "I was just sitting there and- shit that stings!- I must've snagged a sliver or something!"

Together they glance at the table and, sure enough, there is a thick piece of wood about as long as Hermione's pinky sticking up sharply.

"Fuck. I'm going to go mend this," grumbles Mallory, "Bad luck to bleed before a spat."

And then she is gone. Hermione looks long and hard at the table and then, following a hunch, she gets down on all fours and crawls under the table. It is dark underneath it, save for the light shining through a thin hole. She sticks her finger into the hole, and the wood around it is smooth, like someone punched a metal nail through the wood and took it out quickly. Quickly, she crawls out, and looks at the chunk of wood sticking up. She had been sitting at this table for more than an hour now, and in the time, she hadn't noticed any irregularities in the wood.

The hair on the nape of her neck rises as she feels eyes on her. She whirls, but she is alone in the kitchen, as least as far as she can tell. Slowly, a new suspicion begins to form, but it is so outlandish and strange, that she will need to test the theory further before it becomes a true hypothesis. She rubs her thumb over the base of her wand and points it at the table. "Reparo!" she thinks, and she is rewarded with a small snap as the wood retreats back into place.

* * *

><p><strong>Saturday, November 9th. <strong>

Justin Finch-Fletchley is seated across the table from her. He looks pale to the point of turning green and every few seconds his Adam's apple bobs up and down as he swallows dryly. He is scared, Hermione knows this, but she is still too bitter about not going herself to want to offer him much comfort. This is the first time Hermione has seen him since the last battle. He looks completely fine. Even his hair has been regrown, and it falls in soft golden curls around his face. It's hair she would have been jealous of, had she been prone to that sort of vanity.

"It's a nice day, isn't it?" He says eventually. His voice wavers.

Hermione glances out the window. It is just past noon, and the sun is shining, but it is deceptively cold, which she knows because she tried to sit outside with Crookshanks that morning, but after about five minutes, he yowled to go back in. "Lovely." she answers dismissively and sips her tea.

"Have you read anything interesting lately?" He asks.

He must be very desperate for distraction if he's willing to ask her about what she's been reading, and so she takes pity on him. "Quite a lot. How about you? Read anything of note?"

He shakes his head and laughs nervously. "I'm not much of a reader, I guess. I do like movies, though."

"Oh," she says because she figures she should respond, even if she doesn't know what to say.

"Yeah. Like, muggle films, you know? Of course muggle films. Anyway, I used to really like watching war movies. You know what I mean? But I never thought- never once-" and his voice cracks again.

She reaches across the table and lays her hand over his. It is cold and sweaty, but she ignores the unpleasantness. "It's going to be fine, Justin. _You_ are going to be fine. You've done this before. You know what it's like."

"Only once," he confesses, and he looks like he's going to cry, "and you know how well that went."

She squeezes his hand and is still trying to think of how to answer when Mallory tromps into the room. Her short hair has been brushed flat and her lips are dark red. Hermione wonders, absently, why she is wearing makeup.

"Come on, kid," she says, and places a hand on Justin's shoulder. "It's showtime." She glances over at Hermione, and offers a lopsided smile. "Hold down the fort, and with any luck, we won't see you until tomorrow."

Hermione nods in response. "I'll see you tomorrow, then," she says.

Mallory unwraps their port key and she and Justin vanish.

A few minutes later, Ginny wanders into the kitchen, and takes the seat opposite Hermione that Justin just vacated. The clock above the kitchen sink ticks loudly and Ginny chews her nails.

The sky is turning orange when Andromeda enters the kitchen. Today she is dressed in simple black robes and her long blonde hair is pulled back from her face in a severe bun. She places a large wicker basket on the table and Ginny and Hermione help her take out bandages and salves and eleven bottles of potions. The four that Hermione places on the wooden table are all labeled _Essence of Dittany_, but Ginny removes a bottle of _Skele-Gro _and two blood replenishing potions. The rest are three calming draughts and a single bottle of Wiggenweld Potion.

"Be careful with those," Andromeda warns Ginny, "That's the last Wiggenweld we've got."

When the medical station is set up in the kitchen, the three witches stare apprehensively at the back door.

"Now what do we do?" Ginny asks.

"We wait," Andromeda's voice is gentle, but the lines in her face betray her nerves, "and we either wait for the injured or word from Lupin."

"And you do this every time?" Ginny asks incredulously.

"Every time." Andromeda replies, and for the first time, Hermione sees her shoulders sag, like the weight of the world rests there. Hermione realizes, then, that Andromeda's daughter and Andromeda's husband are both out fighting, and if all goes well, she won't see them until tomorrow, and she will only see them sooner if things go wrong.

* * *

><p>Ginny is dozing at the table, Andromeda is knitting, and Hermione is reading at 11:37 that evening, when Lupin's patronus bursts through the wall.<p>

"We are safe," it says, "Dawlish will want to talk with Hermione in the morning, and Tonks sends her love," before vanishing into the air.

Andromeda lets out a sharp sniff, Ginny relaxes against the table, and Hermione closes her eyes, thanking god or good luck that the news wasn't worse.

* * *

><p><strong>Wednesday, November 13th.<strong>

Hermione transfers the teeth from the pocket of her jeans to a pillbox her mother gave her years ago and then slips the pillbox into her beaded bag where she knows she won't lose it.

She wears boots and casts a water repellant charm on herself before they leave. She wears a full winter cloak. She follows the guards into the long brick structure, walking in single-file between Dawlish and Mallory. She hands her wand over without being asked. She walks down another narrow hallway and she thinks about how fortunate it is that she doesn't mind narrow places when they walk through the waterfall. She is soaked to the bone again because the water repelling charm doesn't last through the Thief's Downfall.

They stop at a bare stretch of wall, and she still can't see any difference between this patch and the rest of the wall stretching in either direction. One of the guards- and she can't even tell if it's the same guard as her last visit- holds the small gray ball out to her again. "If anything happens that makes you even remotely uncomfortable, loosen your grip on the ball. It will lock down the cell, effectively ending communication and we will be alerted."

It is soft and it is warm and it feels familiar in her hand- almost weightless. "Got it," she replies. Mallory and Dawlish are silent.

"There is a chair provided to you. The prisoner will be able to hear you and see you, but will be unable to approach the bars that serve as a physical barrier between you. Despite this, please do not pass the line on the floor. Please do not move the chair, pass anything to the prisoner, or approach the walls. When you are ready to leave, simply loosen your grip on the ball or transfer it to your other hand. If you do not signal for termination of the meeting before the allocated half hour, at the end of the allotted time, we will come in to collect you. Do you have any questions?"

"No."

The door creaks open, but before she can walk through it, Dawlish puts a hand on her shoulder. "Don't forget what we talked about." His warning is barely more than a whisper.

She nods, and enters the room.

At the end of the short hall, Malfoy is sitting up on his cot, his legs planted firmly on the floor and his hands laced in his lap. He watches, silent, as she sits down in the chair. "Hello, Malfoy," she sighs.

He doesn't reply. Doesn't even blink. He just stares at her with his flat, pale eyes. There is more hair on his head than there was the last time she was here, and it shines like a faint golden halo around his head. His left eye is so swollen and bruised that it cannot open. The cheek under it is sunken sharply in. His nose is still crookedly smashed against his face. She swallows hard and looks away from him.

"It worked," she says next, because they only have half an hour and she isn't going to waste any more time that she has to. "Whatever you told Dawlish, it worked."

He nods once and closes his good eye.

"We-"

He raises a finger to his lips and she falls silent, very aware of the sound of her breath going in and out and the way the fabric of her cloak shifts as she moves restlessly. After a few moments, though, she can hear it, too: It is not a sound, not exactly. It is more the absence of sound, or the movement of air around a body. Perhaps it is in her imagination, but she feels precisely the way she felt alone in the kitchen the week before. Fear prickles along her arms, raising goosepimples. She wonders if he knows something she doesn't, but before she can think how to phrase the question, he speaks.

"Hello, Granger," he says. She jumps in her seat. His voice is rusty from disuse, but the words are crisp. "I did not mean to frighten you."

The words are not quite an apology at all, but she wouldn't have expected one, anyway. "We want to know where else he might be."

"I'm afraid you'll have to be more specific than that, Granger." He is completely still, other than the movement of his mouth when he speaks and if she did not see his lips open and shut, she would have doubted even that. His eye remains fixed on her, and it does not waver. He is waiting for her next move.

She folds her arms across her chest. "Kingsley Shacklebolt. The Minister of Magic." He knows that's why she's here, and so this must be intentional. He is playing dumb for some reason, but she doesn't know what. He's had a week to think about this, probably, to figure out what he's going to say next to her, and she won't let him stay ahead of her like this.

"Ah yes. The muggle-lover." If there was any emotion at all behind the words, she would be able to guess at what he is thinking, but he sounds like he is reading off of a script and she doesn't know what he means. She wants to ask, but Dawlish told her not to show any interest, if she can help it. _We don't want him feeling like he has something you want. You are a mouthpiece, Granger. Nothing else. Don't let him think otherwise for a moment. _His lips move silently, like he is talking to himself, but they are moving too quickly for her to make out words.

Her lips thin and she grinds her teeth. "Where is he?" she barks out. "There weren't any prisoners at all in the house in Dorchester. Only a dozen low-level recruits. We will find the minister and to do that, we need another address."

"Do you like my teeth, Granger?" he asks, and his mouth widens, exposing two rows of familiar teeth. The gesture isn't a smile and she thinks about dogs baring their teeth in threat.

"We need another address," she repeats, because Dawlish warned her not to get off topic.

"The teeth, Granger," he edges forward on his mattress, leaning toward her, into the light. He holds a hand before his face, like he is framing his mouth for her to see, but all she notices is that there are no fingernails on his left hand, only black scabs.

She lowers her eyes. "Very nice, Malfoy."

"Indeed. The wonders of modern magic never cease to amaze. It was dittany, of course. Rinsed my mouth out with Dittany. It will be better. Can't grow them out, rinse your mouth out with Dittany, it'll be better." He smiles then, exposing all of his perfect, intact teeth.

She is losing him again, his eyes are alive, glimmering with a light that is not at all sane. "Malfoy, we need another address. Malfoy!" she says sharply.

His eyes drift languidly to hers, gray and unseeing, "Cleverest witch of our age."

"An address, Malfoy. If you aren't going to cooperate, I'm going to have to leave." she warns. "We have half an hour to talk, but if they look through my memories and see that I'm not getting anywhere with you, they might not let me come back."

He waves a hand sluggishly before his face, "They have no choice. It is you or the silence and life is very long in silence and your Muggle Lover does not have a long silence." His grin is almost drunken, sloppy on his features. "You will come back because they are desperate for a sign."

She sighs and glances down at the ball in her hand, but before she can change her grip on it, he says sharply, "Where's Potter? Where's the beacon of hope in these dark times?"

The question is so different from his previous tone that she almost answers, but catches herself. "Malfoy, we need an address."

"And what should I ask for in return, pray? What will you give me?"

_Maybe for them not to tear out your fingernails. Maybe for them to fix your nose. _"I can't answer that, Malfoy." but her gaze drifts back to his hand, back in his lap.

His eyes follow hers down and he raises his hand before his face, like he is examining his fingernails. "No, I think not, but it is an idea. I want a newspaper. A _Daily Prophet_. From November. Is it still November?" His gaze does not leave his hand.

"Yes, Malfoy," she says slowly.

"Is it still a Tuesday?"

She pauses before answering. Does this count as too much information? She looks at him then, really looks at him. He is thin, thinner than she ever remembers him. He is in his own head more than he is in the world. His gray Azkaban robes are stained in places with what looks like it might be dried blood or dirt. His nose is still crooked and half his face is sunken in but his posture is still rigid, like he is still holding a crown on his badly beaten head. She set out to rescue him from Death Eaters and now he is being tortured for information in a prison. Some savior she turned out to be. If he was not in need of rescuing when she found him, he certainly is now. This is the least that she can do. "No, Malfoy," she says eventually, "It's Wednesday now. I was here last eight days ago."

He drops his hand back to his lap, and pierces her with a sharp stare. "Do you pity me, Granger?"

And there is ghost of his old self in the words. Clearly articulated and condescending in the shadow of the boy who tortured her at Hogwarts. The boy who was responsible for the death of the greatest wizard she will ever know. The death of her childhood and everything good and kind and innocent in the world. Yes, he has suffered, but it has been his own wrongdoing that has brought this down on him, and still, he is making deals. Still, he is making demands and messing with her head. "No, Malfoy," she bites out, "I do not."

He seems pleased with this, and nods once. "See that that does not change, Mudblood. Do not waste your pity on me. It would be unwise."

She stands, and transfers the ball to her left hand. "I told you not to call me that, Malfoy." she spits out, "And I will do whatever I bloody please, regardless of what you think is wise or not."

The guards are opening the door then and she is already walking toward it, her back to him. She will not look back, even when he next speaks.

"Then I will eat you alive, Mudblood" he calls to her, "Skin, bones, and soul."


	8. How We Are Not the Same

**A/N**: Thank you so very, very much to everyone who has reviewed. I love you. So very, very much. You will probably never fully understand just how much I cherish them. Truly.

I am terrible, I know. I'm sorry. Real life has been hectic. This chapter is late enough without me wasting another second explaining myself.

**Chapter 8**

How We are not the Same

* * *

><p><strong>Wednesday, November 13th.<strong>

She extracts the memory, just like last time, but even when the images in her mind dull and blur around the edges, she cannot ignore that Malfoy is being tortured anymore. Her fingers curl against her palm, even as she follows the guards back out of the prison and back towards the apparition point. Once they are out of earshot, Hermione clears her throat and says, "Dawlish, there's something I want to talk to you about."

* * *

><p>She waits until they get back to Andromeda's house before resuming the argument, which was paused briefly so they could wade out into the cold water of the black sea to take a portkey back. She doesn't even waste time on a drying spell. "I don't care who he is!" She roars, throwing her hands wide and turning on Dawlish.<p>

"Hermione, calm down!" Mallory hisses, putting a restraining hand on her shoulder. "You won't change any minds like this. Think about what you're doing."

"No!" and she knows how much she must sound like Ron, but she doesn't care. She has become part of this great, twisted knot of injustice and she cannot stand it any more. She imagines the teeth in her chest upstairs. She imagines Malfoy's shut and sunken eye. She imagines herself standing over him in the woods- damnation dressed like salvation. "You can't keep torturing him! He's _helping us!_ And do you know what he wants in return? A bloody Daily Prophet! A _newspaper!_"

Dawlish is trying very hard to contain his anger. There is a vein pulsing at his temple and his jaw clenches and unclenches. "I will not have this talk with you again, girl!"

"We will have it time and again until you see reason! You can't keep torturing people like that! This is going to get out at some point, and when it does, I won't stand by you when the press attacks!"

"You are not a ministry official!" He roars finally, "You have no ability to affect this call being made!"

"Oh, yes I do," she widens her eyes, "I won't speak with him again until I have your word that he won't be tortured for information that he'll give us willingly! He can't just keep being treated like a...like a war criminal any more!"

"But he _is_ a war criminal!" Dawlish throws his meaty hands in the air around his face, "That is actually what he is!"

She lets out a strangled cry, "Then don't expect me to go back to Azkaban again! I'm not going to be a part of this...this _madness_ anymore!" and she turns on her heel, and storms out of the house, slamming the door behind her so hard that the windows shake.

On the second floor of the house, Dawlish's bed catches on fire, but Hermione doesn't know this. In fact, no one knows it at all until Ginny opens the door because she smells smoke five minutes later, and by then, the entire room has been engulfed in flames.

**Friday, November 15th.**

Two days later, there is a knock on her door, and Dawlish shows himself in before she can answer it. He has been staying in a different safehouse since the fire and Hermione has not missed him in the slightest.

"He has been given a Daily Prophet from this week." he says by way of introduction. "He is in permanent solitary confinement. There will be no more interrogations, but you _will_ cooperate from now on. On everything."

She sits up on her bed, where she has been reading, "Of course." She agrees at once.

"We'll be going back again at some point in the future. You will be going back. We need to know whatever he'll tell us. Your goal is to find out if he has any memories intact enough to share with us and, if he does, you are to obtain them. Is that clear?"

"Yes," she replies, nodding. "Ok. Definitely."

"You also will not request to be put on any more squads. If you're needed for a fight, we'll let you know, but you can't just keep asking to go into any more spats."

Spats, Hermione knows by now, are what the Aurors call fights. Like giving them a cute, small name makes it any less dangerous. "Ok," she says eventually, although she doesn't like it. She likes the idea of torture even less, even if it is only Malfoy and if no one deserves it more than he does.

"When there is a spat and you are on reserve, you will not complain about it. You will wait to receive word on the off chance that your skills as a cursebreaker and healer are needed or to hear from a messenger upon the completion of the mission."

"Ok," she says because there really isn't anything else that she can say to this, even if she wants to.

"Right then." Dawlish nods once. "Andromeda says lunch is ready and you are to come down to eat."

Hermione smiles at this. Andromeda Tonks probably only said the first part and Dawlish has inserted the second on his own. "Ok," she says, replacing her bookmark and sliding in her sock-clad feet to the floor.

He turns to go, and she notices that his ears are red, "And Dawlish, thank you. I really appreciate it."

He grunts and doesn't turn around.

**Tuesday, November 19th.**

There is a raid on an undisclosed location half a week later and, of course, Hermione is not allowed to go, so she waits at the kitchen table with Ginny, who is chewing noisily on her fingernails. Everything seems louder than it should right now- the rain is hammering on the windows outside, the clock is ticking loud and obnoxious above the door and every time the wood on the fire snaps and pops, both girls jump and look around, just to be sure it wasn't the sound of apparition. Hermione sighs through her nose and opens the first aid kit again, triple-checking to make sure that they still have everything that they might need.

Hermione wishes that Andromeda were here, just for the familiarity of her unflappable presence, but Tonks wasn't feeling well, and Andromeda has been with her for three days now. Hermione did not know that she liked Andromeda until she was suddenly gone.

There is a snap of thunder outside and the back door swings open and Mallory stumbles in, supported by Justin Finch-Fletchley, his curling blonde hair plastered to his face with rainwater and a streak of someone else's blood smeared across his chin. He helps Mallory into a chair where she winces as she bends to remove her boot. He squats in front of her to help untie them.

"What happened?" asks Hermione, and her wand is in her hand already. "Did you find him?"

Mallory shakes her head, splattering the floor with rainwater as Justin slides her shoe gingerly from her left foot. "No, but we did manage to catch a dozen or so Death Eaters."

Justin pulls off her sock with trembling fingers and she whimpers. Just sucks in a breath as he examines the bloody, ragged hole about the size of a sickle going through the top Mallory's foot. Blood drips through the hole and onto the floor and, although it is ragged with blood and torn skin, Hermione can clearly see light shining through it. She swallows thickly and begins to rummage through the little supply bottles.

"What happened to you?" Ginny asks, her eyes wide as she takes in the slow ooze of blood.

"When they realized we had found them, one of them through these little black marble things across the floor at us. They'd go right through whatever they came into contact with. Anything but wood, but we didn't realize it until people started stepping on them."

"I got lucky," Mallory smiles at them, although her skin is pale and faintly green, "Williamson fell on a bunch of them, we don't know if he'll pull through, but we made out better than the death eaters, at any rate." She winces again as Hermione droppers dittany into the hole. The first drop goes right through her foot and lands on the floor, but the second drop catches on a flap of loose skin. Mallory hisses through her teeth as the dittany sizzles on the wound. Next, Hermione measures out a teaspoon of skele-go and Mallory winces as she swallows it.

"Disgusting," she complains. Ginny hands her a glass of water.

Hermione watches, fascinated, as the bone- the fourth metatarsal- regrows, building yellow-white cell on top of yellow-white cell until it fills the hole completely. Hermione measures out three more drops of dittany onto the exposed bone. She wishes she didn't have to use so much- dittany is rare and expensive, but she can't leave a wound like this to heal on its own.

"Thanks," Mallory sighs and leans back in the chair, "much better." She curls and flexes her toes.

"I don't know why you didn't just go to St. Mungo's," Justin says now that the danger seems to have passed.

"No need," she waves away the idea of it, "Hermione took care of it no problem, just like I said she would." Mallory gives her a grin, but Hermione doesn't return it. She is capable of more than putting dittany on things, and she doesn't appreciate being thrown this small of a bone. Ginny shoos Mallory out of the chair so she can scourgify the bloodstains. "And besides, orders are orders and I wasn't going to die or anything."

"I'm not going to give you a blood replenishing potion, are you alright without it, do you think? And what orders?" Hermione asks.

"Fine," Mallory nods, "Dawlish wanted us to come back to tell you that it worked. His information was good, even though Kingsley wasn't there, so you should be ready to head back to Azkaban in the morning."

Hermione glances at the clock. It is a bit after four in the afternoon, even though the sky out the window is dark enough for midnight. "What time are we going?"

"Ten thirty," replies Mallory. She taps the hole in her boot with her wand, "Reparo. Same as last time."

* * *

><p>She goes to bed that night thinking about Harry and Ron. There has been no word from them in what feels like forever. No news is, of course, good news, because if there was news, it would be bad news, but she still doesn't like it. She feels eyes on her almost all the time now, and she wonders if she is being haunted by a spirit or struck with a curse she hasn't noticed before now.<p>

She doesn't know when it started, not exactly, but the first time she remembers feeling watched like this was when she was imprisoned in that dark room. A cold thought catches her heart- what if she wasn't alone down there at all? What if some sort of dark magic was waiting down there in the dark until it could attach itself to someone, and now it is attached to her? She rubs her thumb in swift circles across the base of her wand, and worries her lip between her teeth.

There is a soft pressure on her chest and she sits up so fast that Crookshanks is hurled across the room with a yowl of surprise.

"Whazzat?" Ginny asks, her voice hoarse and confused. "Whazzat sound?"

"Oh Crooks," Hermione sighs, and nonverbally lights the tip of her wand. "I'm so sorry. Are you alright?"

He lets out a grumble in response, and clambers back onto the bed, although this time, he is careful to jump up to the left side of her head, and not directly onto her chest.

**Wednesday, November 20th.**

This time, she borrows Ginny's high quidditch boots and she wears her muggle rain coat. Mallory and Dawlish give her strange looks as she tromps into the kitchen.

"Stare all you want," she says primly, with her nose in the air, "But I will be warm and dry while the two of you are shivering in that freezer they try to pass off as a prison."

"Right. You know the drill. Hands on the shell."

"What kind of shell is it, Dawlish?" Mallory asks lightly.

"Why do you want to know?" Is the growled reply.

"Curiosity." Mallory shrugs lightly. "Is this another murex?" she asks.

"No, and get your hand on the damned thing, or we'll leave you behind." A blush is spreading down the side of Dawlish's neck, and there is a vein throbbing at his temple.

"Oh, but what shall I put my hand on, oh Leader of Mine?" Mallory's hand hovers just above the shell.

Dawlish mumbles something too low and fast for even Hermione to catch it.

"I couldn't quite catch that, Dawlish," Mallory giggles her high girlish chuckle.

Hermione fights to keep down a grin as Dawlish, broad shouldered and booming-voiced, mutters, "Lightning Whelk."

Grinning triumphantly, Mallory puts her hand squarely on the shell.

* * *

><p>"Aren't you worried he's going to sack you?" Hermione asks Mallory as they slosh through the water towards the waiting guards.<p>

Mallory gives her a long took, like she is running numbers in her head, "He can't," she replies quietly, as though it is a secret she is trusting Hermione with, "When the ministry fell, we defected rather than work under Death Eater control. He isn't actually my boss anymore."

Hermione knew that the aurors had defected, of course, but she also knew that everyone still followed rank and Dawlish still acted like he was in charge. The aurors mostly keep to themselves at Andromeda's house, and they never wear the bright blue Phoenix armbands, so they are as much an imposing mystery to the "civilians" as they have always been. Hermione had just assumed that they still had some sort of hierarchy established, but hearing Mallory so clearly state that she did not have to listen to Dawlish sounded so strange- like someone had taken the world apart and then put it back together sideways.

"Of course we still mostly listen to him," Mallory adds, sensing Hermione discomfiture, "he's the most experienced, and he really does look out for us." She looks up at Dawlish, who is stomping a ways in front of them, already on the shore, and looking murderous. "Isn't that right, Dawlish?" She calls.

He grunts and glares out at her. "Hurry up your arses or I'll leave you here."

"You aren't still sore about the seashell thing, are you?"

* * *

><p>She holds out her wand silently and they don't even ask before they take it. The waterfall still soaks through Hermione's cloak, and it weighs on her shoulders like a dead body. Everything is exactly the same. They turn left and they turn right and a stretch of wall opens up like a door in front of them when they stop.<p>

The guard on the left holds the gray ball out to her. "If anything happens that makes you even remotely uncomfortable, loosen your grip on the ball. It will lock down the cell, effectively ending communication and we will be alerted," he says, but she is nodding without listening.

"Ok," she says as soon as he is finished speaking. Mallory gives her a thumbs up when the guard on the right holds the door open for her, and Dawlish looks stonily at her with his arms folded across his chest.

There is a lump of blankets on the bed, and, of course, he is under those, just like he was on their first meeting.

"Malfoy," she says, a bit louder than normal. Is he sleeping? She thinks it a bit out of character for him to be such a deep sleeper while he is a prisoner in Azkaban. Maybe he's dead. She can't, after all, see the rise and fall of breath, but that could also just be a function of the distance between them.

"Malfoy," she tries again, "Have you died?"

"As convenient as that would be, I'm sure," replies his voice, but not from the bed. He is on the other side of the cell, hidden mostly by shadow. "I must disappoint." He steps forward, and drapes his arms over the bars of his cage so that his fingers dangle out on her side of the bars. The scabs on his fingertips are shiny, but they do not look new. There is a deep cut running from just beside his left eye to the tip of his chin, like a crooked smile carved onto his face. His nose is still bent unnaturally to one side. His right eye is still mostly closed, but a sliver of gray iris and red scabbing peaks out at her from under the puffy purple lid. He looks horrible, but less horrible than last time, and none of the damage looks new. She sits a bit straighter.

His head snaps toward her face suddenly, like catching sight of something. The intensity of his stare unnerves her, like he is trying to memorize some change in her features that she was unaware of, at least until his head tilts sideways, and his eyes meet hers. Then, she realizes with a cold start that he was not looking at her at all, but just past her face. The hairs on the back of her neck rise and goosepimples erupt on her skin.

"Fear makes the wolf look bigger, but don't tell the wolf it's so." he tells her matter-of-factly, and she almost believes that he is not talking like a madman, that he knows something about whatever curse she is under.

Maybe he does, she thinks to herself, He is, after all, a death eater. "Your information was good," she informs him, "But Kingsley wasn't there."

"Did they let you go, Granger? When they raided the house? Were you there?" His words are intense, desperate, almost, like he is hungry for something and looking desperately for it anywhere he can, although she doesn't know what exactly that is. His tongue darts out and wets his lips.

She did not expect the question, but she maintains her composure when she answers, anyway. "That is none of your business, Malfoy. Where I go and what I do when I'm not here does not concern you."

"Oh, but it does," he replies, a deranged smile curling up his cheek, "If the house still stands, it matters. But of course it stands, and you are here and not there, and it is angry and it is hungry and you talk more than play. I never play anymore, Granger. There are no more walks and talks and life is very long but not for you. Not for yours." His eyes are unfocused and his hands curl and uncurl around the bars, before relaxing downward again.

She sighs hard through her nose. By now she has learned that when Malfoy's mind wanders like this, he will bring himself back when he can, but she does not feel like waiting for that to happen. She is tired and she is wet and she is frightened, and this last one makes her angry. Although it is not Malfoy's fault, and it is illogical to blame him for his own madness and how she relates his comments to her own life, she still blames him.

"Where is Potter?" His eyes are fixed on her again, and his gaze is sharp.

"If I haven't told you yet," she asks, "What honestly makes you think that I'll tell you now?"

"You will see, Granger, that I always get what I want in the end."

She gives him a look that she hopes conveys her disbelief of this statement, "Right. Anyway, we want two addresses now."

"There's no point," Malfoy shakes his head slowly, "The Muggle Lover is dead."

Her hands clench into fists. Her nails bite into her palms. "you have no way of knowing that, Malfoy, and I do not appreciate being lied to."

"Flay him, bake him, feed him to the snake, him!" Malfoy calls out in a singsong voice.

"Stop it!" she snaps and, much to her surprise he does. Even the mad smile shrinks.

"Forgive me, Granger, I know not what I do. This is no lie, although you think it so. Cleverest witch who cannot read. You will not find the body, but you will persist in looking, I am sure. You will want new places anyway, and it will be good to find the hiding holes whether they hold your treasure or not."

"You have no way of knowing if he is dead." She repeats it more for her sake than for his, because she knows what the truth must logically be, but she is having a hard time convincing her heart of it.

"But I know where he is?" His eyebrow almost quirks, but not quite.

"You know where he might be, Malfoy. There's a difference." She sneers at him then, because he is pretending to know more than he does. He is trying to make himself seem more important than he really is and it is pathetic, serving only to remind her what an opportunistic snake he really is. Even now, he is trying to bargain. She almost regrets the bargain she made on his behalf- he does not seem the least bit grateful. If anything, he is even more insufferable than he was before.

"And thus wars are fought."

This gives her pause. The comment is almost thought-provoking, or would be if he were not so mad while saying it. It sounds like it should mean something deep, but in context, she cannot figure out what it might mean. Anyway, she isn't here for a social chat, and his comment about Kingsley still has her hackles raised. "Will you cooperate- yes or no?" she asks bluntly.

He closes his eyes and inhales deeply. "A new perfume?"

"Yes or no?" She repeats. No, she isn't wearing perfume, but she did wash her hair this morning and she wonders to herself if it is even possible that he can smell her shampoo.

"And what will I get in return?" he asks, as he has asked both times before now.

She doesn't even bother answering. She just picks her chin up a little higher and gives him her haughtiest stare.

He stretches his arms forward, and they are so long that they almost reach the line on the floor. His knuckles crack and he arches backwards like a cat. Like he is just waking up from a nap. Like this is a meeting between friends and he is comfortable where he is. His fingers bend like they have been broken too often.

"A newspaper," he says for the second time. "What day is it today?"

Dawlish chewed her out for answering that one last time, so she doesn't want to answer it today. She glares at him instead, but something about his demeanor has shifted. There is an almost tentative curiosity in his words, and he is looking up at her from under his eyelashes. Like he doesn't want to hope that she'll answer. Like he doesn't want to put that much faith in it.

And all at once Hermione's mind pulls out like a camera on a string and she is watching her life unfold as though she is watching this all in a movie. She sees herself, sitting cross-armed and cross-legged in front of a badly broken boy, and he is asking her what day it is, and she is not going to answer because she doesn't want to give him even that much satisfaction, and suddenly she knows how petty and small withholding such information really is. Somewhere, and she isn't sure where, she started seeing this meeting as her versus him, and she can't stand that. It leaves a bad taste in her mouth because Dawlish is wrong- this isn't about good guys and bad guys. She doesn't know yet what it really is about, but she is sure that is not it.

"It's Wednesday."

His head leans forward against the bars and he lets out a sigh, his eyes closed. He mutters something, but she cannot hear what it is. He is smiling faintly when his head tilts back up towards her. "Run along, little mudblood," he says, "Tell your friends what I have said, and I am sure I will see you soon."

She wants to stay longer, just to spite him, but at the same time, she doesn't want to spend any more time than absolutely necessary shivering in this cell opposite a deranged reminder of her past who is smiling gently up at her.

So she shifts the ball from her left hand to her right, and the door swings open and she is escorted out. Malfoy's eye remains trained on her until the door is closed between them.

* * *

><p>She leaves the visitor's room with the little vial of her memory held in her hand.<p>

"You don't look too good," Mallory says after Hermione hands the vial off to Dawlish.

Hermione shakes her head in reply. "This place is getting to me," she says. It isn't the whole truth, she knows. Malfoy is getting to her more than Azkaban is, but she doesn't want to admit to that out loud, especially not with Dawlish within hearing.

Still, it's true enough that Mallory seems to buy it. "It does that to everyone," she says, and claps Hermione once on the back. "We'll get out of here, and we'll get a drink. Do you smoke?"

"Bulstrode, you will not get anyone else hooked on that filthy habit! The girl is young. Act like the adult your birth certificate says you are." Dawlish's warning voice cuts in, and both girls jump.

"It was only a question," Mallory grumbles, but doesn't press the subject any more. "Killjoy," she grumbles under her breath.

* * *

><p>Later that evening, while Hermione is sitting by the fireplace with a book and her cat, Ginny pads into the room and flops onto the couch beside her.<p>

"Mallory said you need some girl time," Ginny says, "So what's going on?"

Hermione looks up at her, more confused than anything else. "I have no idea." Hermione replies honestly. Crookshanks puts a paw on her hand to remind her to keep scratching his chin. She complies.

"Is it the boys?" Ginny asks, and by the tender way she says _boys_, Hermione knows that, no matter how much she misses Harry and Ron, Ginny probably misses them twice that much, since she hasn't been allowed to leave Andromeda's once since she and Hermione arrived here more than a month ago.

"I suppose it is," Hermione lies, even though she knows that if anything is bothering her, it is her meeting with Malfoy that always leave her disconcerted and angry.

Ginny nods understandingly, "I miss them too. It's like I'll never be whole again, you know? Between them and F-Fred," she swallows quickly as she says the name, and blinks too often to just be clearing her eyes, "It's like everything is more broken than can ever be fixed, you know?"

It is worth noting that this is the first time Hermione has heard any of the Weasleys say his name since he died, and all of a sudden, it feels like there is a ghost of him in the room- like a shadow stained into the carpet at Ginny's feet that will always belong to him.

Loss, Hermione realizes, is like a car crash. Physics teaches that in any car crash, there are really three smaller crashes. There is the car connecting with the other car, or with the telephone pole, or with whatever it is hitting. Then there is the body being thrown forward against the seatbelt or dashboard or road, since according to Newton's first law, a body in motion will stay in motion until it meets some sort of resistance. The third type of collision is the worst kind- it is the organs and blood and whatnot inside the person that are thrown forward against the rib cage or skin of the person in the crash. This is the most dangerous type of crash because this is the one that doesn't show immediate damage, but has a lasting effect. Fred died. It only happened once and it was sudden and then it was over, like a car hitting a telephone pole. Everyone grieved his death, and that was their heads hitting the dashboard. But he is still an empty hole that they cannot fill; he is still an aching cavity where love once sat. And that is the last accident, and that is the one that hurts the most; that does the most damage.

Hermione puts an arm around Ginny's skinny shoulders, careful not to dislodge Crookshanks, "It's all going to be ok," she says.


	9. The Unlocked Door

**A/N:** To those of you who have reviewed: I am working on a **special side chapter** thing for you, but unfortunately it won't make any sense to you for, like, three more chapters (or up to ten because I am the world's slowest editor and everything that has been published so far was in the rough draft as chapters 1-3.

ALSO! I regret to inform you that I have a very busy couple of months ahead of me. I am moving across the globe (literally) in a month and a half, but my apartment lease expires in a month, so that means that I will have to rely on public access to publish chapters for 2-3 weeks during April. While I hope to continue with my weekly updates, I don't know if that will be possible during that time. I know it's early to be announcing this and everything might work out fine, I just want you to be prepared in case I dip for a bit next month.

Sorry this is short, but I am currently trying to figure out how to pair down my worldly possessions to fit into two suitcases or less.

**EDIT!** This chapter is dedicated to the brilliant Elantil, who is a magnificent editor even though she doesn't have to be. She is just amazing like that. WORSHIP HER!

**Chapter 9: The Unlocked Door**

**Sunday, November 23rd.**

When the back door rattles open this time, it is Lavender Brown and Seamus Finnegan who stumble in. Both are covered in sweat and they look excited.

"Did you find him?" Hermione is on her feet and so is Ginny.

Seamus shakes his head and Lavender collapses heavily in a chair. "But we did capture a good half-dozen, with no casualties on our side this time!" Lavender sounds pleased with herself.

Hermione tries not to feel too jealous. She is better with magic than Lavender, and Lavender has made a place for herself in a squad of other people Hermione grew up with, so it is sour to taste that she is not one of them so acutely.

"That's great, Lavender!" Ginny sounds genuinely pleased, and maybe she is. After all, she can't go against her mother's order not to fight for another few months, and she is always desperately hungry for any news of the outside world and war.

"Yeah, it was mostly recruits," chimes in Seamus, "but we got Goyle senior."

Ginny crows and claps her hands, "About bloody time!"

Even Hermione smiles.

"Is there anything to eat," asks Seamus, who is already looking in the refrigerator, "I'm starving!"

**Monday, November 24th.**

"Hello, Malfoy."

He closes his eyes as she sits down in her chair, and she waits for him to decide that it is really her. His head swivels as he looks past her, but his gaze pauses on her chair, and then his head tilts down and he is staring at her feet. She curls her toes inside her boots. She thinks about the claws reaching from the darkness, but towards her ankles this time. But, no- now is not the time to get worked about about whatever curse if following her. She doesn't know if Malfoy would be able to tell if she allowed herself to be truly scared, but she won't even risk giving him the satisfaction. She leaves her feet planted firmly on the ground and tries to slow her breathing down by force.

"It has claws," he returns by way of greeting.

She wonders if he read her mind, or at least her imagination. _I am thinking about purple panda bears!_ she thinks as loudly as she can, just to throw him off if he can read her mind (but she knows he can't), and out loud, she says, "Good to know," and she tries to keep the fear out of her voice, but the sound comes out higher and closer to a whine than normal.

His eyes are still purple. His sharp nose is still crooked and there is another bruise that takes up his entire left cheek, which still looks sunken in. His hair is longer though, and when he laces his fingers in his lap, she sees his nail beds are only lightly scabbed over and there is a faint crescent of nail visible at the edges of each finger, ragged but definitely present. This is evidence of her victory over the ministry, and she is proud.

"The mission was successful, Malfoy," she says then, because she realizes that he is just staring at her, waiting for her to say something else. "But we need another location."

"Is this all that they want from me?" he sighs dramatically, "I could be so much more than a map, Granger. They are wasting my talents."

She shrugs and keeps her face blank. "I'm only a spokesperson, Malfoy. If you want to change this, bring it up with Dawlish or one of your keepers."

He laughs then, and there is no mirth in the sound, but there is something very close to disgust. "Then they are wasting your talents so much more than they are wasting mine."

She agrees with him, but she can't say so because she isn't supposed to show any interest in him. She can't be something he gets invested in and so she can't tell him how right he really is. "A location, Malfoy. I'm here to negotiate for whatever you want next."

"Have you been keeping up with the news, Granger?" He reaches behind himself.

For one crazy moment, Hermione think he is going to pull out a wand and kill her. Right there, from inside his prison cell, and she is on her feet, arms in front of her face to protect her eyes, nose, and mouth from whatever curse is coming, her heart is pounding hard on her tongue and she tastes fear, an acrid bile in her throat. She is going to die. She is going to die here and now and she is going to be killed by Draco _Fucking_ Malfoy who only now seems like he might be a threat.

But he only pulls out a neatly folded Daily Prophet.

He is staring at her as though nothing had interrupted their talk. His eyes are glassy and calm. "I know something that you don't know, Granger," he taunts slowly.

She sits heavily back in her chair. "What do you want in exchange for another location?" she snaps back because she is no longer in a mood for these games.

"The news, Granger," is the immediate reply. "I want a daily subscription to the _Prophet_. I can pay for it myself, but I will need a loan for the money before I can access my account."

Of all the things he can request in the world, this is what he wants. More than for his face to be healed. More than his freedom or news about his family. A newspaper. A cruel newspaper that does nothing but spout lies about "Magic-Stealing Muggles" and the dangers of "Blood Traitors" and Harry Potter to the very fabric of wizarding society. She feels very cold and very far away. She knows that Malfoy isn't the type to care about that sort of thing, but his blase approach to the obvious biases and bigotry is appalling and base. She has had his blood on her hands and his teeth in her pocket, but he is as remote as the moon and infinitely colder.

"Fine. I'll relay the request," she says and she doesn't have to try to keep her voice flat. She is only a messenger. She doesn't know if they can grant the request, but they will see it in her memories and they will decide for themselves.

He tilts his head to one side, as if he can hear something she can't and for one horrifying moment, she thinks that maybe he can, but no- he is the crazy one, not her. A slow smile curls up his cheek, "I know something you don't know," he repeats in a singsong voice. "I know something, Granger. Something you don't. Do you want to know what it is, Granger?" He sways from side to side like a snake before a sparrow and rises slowly to his feet. His posture is rigid and his head still grazes the ceiling. She can see the outline of his collarbone through the thin material of his shirt.

"If it isn't about where we can find the minister, Malfoy-"

"Oh, but it is. It's the secret to all of this. It will reveal everything to you- where you stand in all of this and even what role I shall play."

She considers this for a moment. There is a very good chance, she thinks, that he is making this up, just to toy with her. He's trying to get a reaction and he's using her well-known curiosity against her, but still part of her wonders if maybe he does know something that he's only now hinting at. "Fine," she says eventually, "What is it?"

"Come closer," he sways on his feet again, lurches forward one step. He isn't wearing shoes. The gray Azkaban pants leave his ankles exposed to the cold. They are knobbly. He wraps his hands around the bars of his cage.

Something about this seems off to her, but she can't figure out what it is. She stands, and takes a step toward him, so her toes are just along the black line painted on the floor. It is sticky under her shoes. Like tar.

"Closer," he says again and his eyes are glassy in the dull light. He is still smiling at her and his head presses against the bars.

Hesitantly, she takes a step over the line. Nothing happens. No doors open. No alarms sound. Nothing happens, except that Malfoy smiles a bit wider and the grin is too big for his hollowed out face. A pink tongue darts out and wets his lips. He whispers something.

Hermione watches his lips move, but can't hear anything. "What did you say?" she leans forward, takes another step toward him. "I couldn't hear you." It is stupid to take another step toward him, she knows, but Dawlish and the guards had both assured her that she is protected by more than one type of barrier, and so what harm could there be in taking a step toward him? She knows it is probably stupid to test fate like this, and she hesitates. Hermione Granger has always been the smart one, but being the smart one has been more trouble that it is worth recently. She wants to be brave, and one cannot be brave and smart simultaneously at this point, and so she chooses to be brave.

He whispers again and she leans in to hear it. "Y...ti..ish. If...gi...a..."

She takes another step forward, and she is so close now that she can see the shadowy crease on the bridge of his nose where it has snapped and the flecks of blue around the dilated pupil of his left eye. She is so close that she could reach out to touch him if she wanted to, but she knows that the barriers won't let her through.

Something cold brushes against the knuckles of her right hand, and her head snaps down as his fingers pull back inside the cell. "They haven't locked the door in a week. They want to see what I'll do."

She takes stumbling steps backwards and realizes, too late that the ball isn't in her hands any more. It's in Malfoy's and he tosses it from his left and to his right. The door swings open. The guards rush in and Dawlish is close behind them. He drags her backwards toward the exit as spells flash red into Malfoy's cage.

* * *

><p>Her hands are still shaking as she and Dawlish make their way to the apparition point, "He was lying, Hermione," Dawlish barks. "This is exactly why I told you not to get too close. And why the hell did you cross that line?"<p>

She nods and tries to believe him. "Of course. It's just a bit of a shock is all."

"Course it is," he is gruff, but not unkind, "He's your first real prisoner. They don't have anything to do but think all day, now that we've lost the dementors, which is ruddy the worst thing to happen so far, so all they do is plan how to mess with the good guys."

Hermione remembers the dementors and she remembers Sirius- haunted and gaunt after his stay in Azkaban. She remembers Harry screaming and collapsing. She remembers the cold hand of hopelessness closing around her own heart. She doesn't think that they "lost" the dementors and she certainly doesn't think it's the "worst thing to happen" that they aren't in Azkaban any more, but she doesn't say any of this. Instead, she says, "I knew him from school, you know. Malfoy. He wasn't like this then."

"War changes everyone," Dawlish replies.

Hermione nods but doesn't answer. She is trying to figure out if Draco's words were a warning or a threat. She is trying to decide if he was lying to her or not, but Dawlish is being too understanding for her to truly believe.

He says then, "After we get to Andromeda's. Firewhiskey for the nerves. Only thing in order after something like this."

* * *

><p>As soon as they get to the safe house, Dawlish pulls firewhiskey out of a cabinet above the refrigerator and she collapses into her usual chair at the table.<p>

"Oh," he says, like the idea hits him suddenly, "Forgot. I'll want that memory from you before we start drinking. Alcohol muddles things, and I want this to be clear."

"Right," she says, caught off guard. She stands, "I've got vials up in my room. I'll just go do that now."

He nods and she scampers up the stairs to the room she shares with Ginny and counts herself lucky that Ginny is not inside. She siphons out the memory for Dawlish and, on an impulse, she recalls the spell that Lupin used to copy her memory months ago, and quietly makes a copy of her memory and drops the second silvery strand into a separate vial that she hastily stuffs into her beaded bag. She doesn't want to take too long, just in case Dawlish thinks she's tampering with the memory, and so she tosses her bag onto her bed and heads back downstairs.

They have three rounds of firewhiskey and she is feeling relaxed and smiley by the time he leaves. He reminds her of an uncle who died when she was young- her mother's brother- and she almost regrets keeping a copy of the memory for herself. She almost gives it back to him when he puts on his travelling cloak to leave, but she doesn't want to end the evening on a sour note, so she resolves to just watch the memory and prove to herself that she has no reason to be suspicious. Dawlish isn't the type to lie to her.

* * *

><p>The next day, she approaches Andromeda, who is chopping vegetables for dinner.<p>

"Andromeda," she says as politely as she can, "Do you have a penseive I could borrow?"

"That depends on what you want it for," Andromeda replies without missing a beat. Her eyes are calculating as she looks Hermione up and down.

"I want to look at some memories of a new Death Eater curse," she recites. She has been rehearsing the lie in her room all morning, "It's one that-"

"I don't want to hear about another of these curses," Andromeda cuts in, waving the knife as if to ward off a particularly gruesome mental image. Her husband has been missing for three days. He is on a mission, but Andromeda clearly doesn't want to think about what might happen to him. Hermione mentally pats herself on the back for choosing this excuse.

Andromeda leads Hermione up to a study on the third floor and unlocks a cabinet, pulling an empty penseive out and placing it gently on the table.

"Just come find me when you're done so I can lock the room up," Andromeda says, who has too many soldiers in her house to want to ask more questions. Hermione is grateful for this, because she doesn't know what she'd say if Andromeda asked. "Take however long you need." Then she is gone.

Hermione dumps the bottle upside down into the pensieve and sticks her head in.

"Hello, Malfoy," Memory-Hermione says, sitting straight-backed in her metal chair.

Memory-Malfoy closes his eyes and opens them again. Hermione walks around the chair to see if she can catch a glimpse of the monster, but there is nothing out of the ordinary in what she sees.

"The mission was successful, Malfoy," she hears herself say and she is so surprised by this that she passes right through herself, and feels like she has been plunged into a bucket of icy water.

"No," she mumbles to herself, and her eyebrows draw low over her eyes. "That isn't what happened."

She watches the start to the memory over and over again, looking for the seam where something was altered, but there is nothing. "Hello, Malfoy," she says coldly over and over again. He blinks- that's all it is, a blink- and then she says "The mission was successful, Malfoy." Like there was nothing at all between these things, but she knows that there was! She can remember it perfectly in her mind! Malfoy told her it had claws and she was frightened by it!

But did he? Had she, really?

There is no seam in the watercolor-reality of the pensieve. There is no glitch in her memory, and so she doubts the memory she has in her mind.

She wonders if she is going mad. She thinks that there is a pretty good chance that her time in that dark cell unhinged her a bit, but she cannot doubt how she escaped, nor the wand she brought back with her, although the ministry was never able to trace the wand back to an original owner. She can feel the world spinning around her and she is starting to doubt her place in the reality she knows. But Malfoy said something, too! She knows he did. She makes a mental note to go back and check all of the memories.

Reluctantly, she forces her brain back to the query she originally set out to answer and dives back into the memory.

"I know something you don't know," Malfoy taunts for the second time, his head tilted to the side. She can see, now, that he is not looking at her figure in the chair when he is speaking, but his eyes are wildly roaming around the room. Hermione walks up to him and passes through the ephemeral bars of the cell. She circles him as memory-Hermione speaks with him.

Only from this close can she see how thin he is. His back is hunched forward, and she can see the ridges of his spine and the outline of his ribs through the thin shirt. Scars peek up over the collar of his shirt, raised and paler than his skin like long white worms shining in the dim torchlight.

She circles back toward his face and stands in the bars, only inches from him. His tongue flicks out and he licks lips. Her eyes follow the gesture, and she turns to catch her own response, but he whispers. "Are you listening, Dawlish?" It is barely more than a breath.

"What did you say?" Memory-Hermione says and present-Hermione jumps. The memory-her leans forward and takes a step toward Malfoy. Hermione had never realized how loud her own voice was before. Even her shoes sound loud on the flagstones. "I couldn't hear you."

Hermione watches the fear flicker in her own eyes. Is she afraid of Malfoy? Oh, if only her fifteen-year-old self could see her now- separated from her friends and afraid of a schoolyard bully.

He whispers again, just behind her ear and she can hear him clearly this time. "You are wasting my time, Dawlish. If you do not give me what I want soon then I float away on the blood of your aurors. You do not want me as your enemy, Dawlish. I know things you don't."

She approaches the cell now, in the memory, and Malfoy's eyes dilate. Hermione turns to see the freckles on her own nose, and she watches Malfoy's eyes rake over her face. His nostrils flare ever-so-slightly, like he is smelling her, but his eyes never stray farther than her collar, and he keeps eye contact with her steadily. Even as a third-party observer, Hermione cannot read the expression in his cold gaze.

His hand is through the bars before he even begins to speak, even though he never breaks eye contact with her. His fingers close around the edges of the ball in her hand. "They haven't locked the door in a week. They want to see what I'll do."

She watches as he turns his fingers ever-so-slightly to brush his ring and fifth fingers against her knuckles. The gesture is gentler than she expected, and not an accident at all. It was intentional, to let her know what he was doing without having to tell her. Memory-Hermione recoils from the touch automatically and the ball stays in Malfoy's hand. In the memory, her eyes are wide with panic.

She is still in the cell with Malfoy, who sighs lightly, "Three days, Dawlish." he says it so quietly that if she were any father from him, she wouldn't even have known he had spoken.

The door on the other side of the hallway bursts open. There are flashes of light. The memory ends.

Hermione is standing in the orange glow of sunset in Andromeda's study. With shaking fingers, she siphons the memory back into the small vial and replaces the pensieve in the cabinet. She takes a moment to settle her hammering heart before leaving the room.

"Did you find out what you needed?" Andromeda asks when Hermione returns to the kitchen. She is stirring a large pot of good-smelling stew over a blue-green fire.

"For the most part," she replies, and she is proud of how even her voice remains.


	10. Vows

**A/N:** Look who's got a chapter out a day early! Yay!

Also, I am definitely going to be sending a **bonus** chapter out to reviewers, but I don't want to bother people who have given up on this story, so let's say if someone has reviewed 3 times, I'll send out the extra chapter as soon as it's plot relevant without giving anything away.

**Chapter 10: Vows**

* * *

><p><strong>Thursday, November 27th.<strong>

When Hermione thinks about Harry now, she remembers him with broken glasses and clothes that are too big on him. She thinks about him a lot. More than anyone else, even Ron or her parents, which she admits to herself with a squirm of guilt in her belly. She doesn't know why she thinks about him so often. She loves him, of course, but she loves Ron and her parents, too, and she doesn't think about them nearly as much as she thinks about Harry.

Ginny is the same way, she knows.

Hermione doesn't normally sleep well at night, at least not for very long before some nightmare tugs her awake or some invisible night sound wrenches her from sleep. And then there is the horrible few seconds when she can't remember where she is and the dark is suffocating and she can still smell that dead body out there in the dark. So, to avoid this problem completely, she spends most of the night at the kitchen table with books and Crookshanks or the occasional other insomniac or late night lover who is passing through the house for a few days. Sometimes, though, exhaustion or a desire not to have to make polite conversation with strangers drags her up the stairs and into her own room, where she flops heavily on her bed and stares at the glow-in-the-dark hands of her muggle clock, waiting for morning.

Whenever she does this, Ginny turns in her sleep and more often than not, she mumbles something. Hermione doesn't know if Ginny knows that she talks in her sleep, but she figures she must know, since she shared a room with four other girls during her years at Hogwarts. It is always names that Ginny murmurs, and little nonsensical comments. Sometimes, they don't really make any sense. "Arnold, stop eating my hair!" she'll sometimes say, or "I don't want to visit Aunt Muriel." "Fred! No!" is common now, as are the names of her other brothers, but she never mentions anyone as much as she mentions "Harry." Harry, like a prayer. Harry, like a secret. Harry, so tenderly that it can only be said by a girl who has never loved another boy.

Hermione doesn't understand this fierce devotion- all of her relationships have been short-lived and more rooted in friendship than any bone-deep longing. Maybe she isn't capable of the kind of love that Ginny has for Harry. Maybe she's too cerebrally involved for that. But she wonders what it must feel like- to be so far away from your sun, moon, and stars. Hermione doesn't know how Ginny does it.

But Hermione thinks about Harry, too. In her own way, and misses him constantly. Hermione has always admired two things about Harry: The first is Harry's ability to make friends everywhere he goes. At first, when they were young, she thought it was only because fame perpetually preceded him. As they got older, though, she began to realize that there is a disarming honesty in Harry- he is so very genuine and earnest that one cannot help but to trust him. Harry really looks at you when you're talking to him- like he can't believe his good fortune that you've picked him of all people to talk to. Hermione isn't like that at all, and she knows it. She isn't unfriendly, but she refuses to turn off or dull down her intellect and this, she has long since figured out, sometimes rubs people the wrong way. She is very familiar with glazed-over stares and dismissive eyerolls, but sometimes she wishes that she could comport herself just a bit more like Harry- to drum up loyalty even in the least likely of places. This is why he is the secret weapon, more than any connection to Voldemort or any foolish prophecy. He is a beacon of hope and a rallying point without being anything other than himself. And this, Hermione firmly believes, is the trait in Harry that Dumbledore so ardently prized.

The other trait she has always respected and tried to emulate is Harry's undauntable courage. Hermione is too smart to be really brave. Her brain works too much and too fast for her to make the split-second decisions that Harry and Ron have always made. When she was a first year, the sorting hat took a long time deliberating between Gryffindor and Ravenclaw, and it was her admiration for bravery which finally had her placed (after nearly four agonizing minutes). She'll face danger, of course, but she'll do it with knocking knees and a trembling wand. Harry, on the other hand, has faced certain death so many times that they greet each other like old friends when they meet. She thinks about Harry the most when she is scared, and when she is unsure of whether to proceed with what is safe or what is brave, she invariably asks herself, "What would Harry do?"

She is asking herself this question right now, as she is walking down the hall toward Malfoy's cell.

She knows exactly how she got to this point: Dawlish sent an owl to Andromeda the night before, saying that Hermione was to be ready for another trip to Azkaban in the morning, as they discussed. The prospect of going back to Azkaban is not the vaguely terrifying part. The problem is that she has no doubt that Malfoy was telling the truth about not being locked in. Had he been under the wards as was promised by the guards and by Dawlish himself, she has no doubt that he would have been unable to touch the bars of his cage, let alone to take her security ball from her. If that were not terrifying enough on its own, the fact remains that Malfoy is still in Azkaban after the warning that he issued to Dawlish in her memory. She wasn't entirely sure of what the words themselves meant (it was a very dramatic way of speaking, if nothing else), but the meaning was amply apparent: let me out or people will die.

What would Harry do? _Probably refuse to go at all unless someone explained everything to him_. But she already bargained away that option, and she wonders now if Malfoy not getting tortured was worth this for her.

Of course she spent most of yesterday trying to extract her other memories from her visits with Malfoy, but the problem with memory extraction for pensieve use is that one is left with only a dull husk of a memory, which meant that she wasn't able to get more than fuzzy pieces to view in Andromeda's pensieve, so the time spent was mostly wasted. Malfoy still being in Azkaban after his brutish warning meant one of three things: the first is that Dawlish had not yet viewed the memory, which she doubts. The second is that he had viewed the memory and was choosing not to comply. This was the worrying option because it meant that Dawlish was sending her into a conversation with a madman who might easily want her dead and was probably not actually behind a locked door. She isn't afraid of Malfoy, exactly, although she knows she has every reason to be. That, she supposed, is because he clearly has had ample time to do her in, and hasn't chosen to do so. This, in itself is a puzzle that she is eager to solve, but does not indicate that Malfoy is going to kill her. Unless, of course Dawlish is going to refuse to comply. The third option is that Dawlish was planning on complying, but as of yet had said nothing on the subject to her.

At any rate, she has to pretend that she doesn't know any of this because if she lets on that she does, Dawlish will know that she lied to him and she has no doubt that he'll be angry about that.

"Granger," Dawlish stops her with a rough hand on her shoulder and she jumps with a yelp. Dawlish ignores this. "There's something I want to mention before we go any further."

The guards are waiting patiently farther up ahead, like they knew this was coming.

"What is it?" she asks, and she is sure that he is going to tell her everything, and although she wishes he had told her sometime earlier, she is relieved that he really isn't the type to lie.

"We're going to try something new with Malfoy today," he continues, "You are to ask if he will be willing to help us scout locations. There are some places we can't get to and we need him to lead us."

_Liar_, Hermione thinks, but she doesn't say anything because she doesn't trust her mouth not to betray her. She has never been a good liar. Not like Dawlish is, anyway. She just stares at him.

"These are going to be security measures if he agrees. There won't be any trouble if he does what we say and follows orders."

"And what if he doesn't?"

"Never you mind about that. Ask him if he'll mind accompanying us to the most recent location and making an unbreakable vow."

She furrows her brow. She knows what an unbreakable vow is, of course, but she doesn't know what Dawlish plans on making Malfoy vow. Things like that are tricky at the best of times and she wonders if Dawlish has given this ample thought.

"I'll answer all of your questions about it once we're out of here, but we only have until eleven-thirty to be out of Azkaban, and I'd rather get this done today."

He sounds like he just wants to finish up as quickly as possible, but Hermione wonders if maybe he isn't trying to comply with Malfoy's three-day ultimatum, which would mean that he's more afraid of Malfoy than he's letting on. She wonders what sort of prisoner he is to them.

_What would Harry do?_

"Alright," she says, but only because she wouldn't trust Dawlish's answers if she demanded them, anyway.

* * *

><p>"Hello, Malfoy," she says, but doesn't sit in her chair. Instead, she stands behind it, one hand braced on it. It won't move, she knows, it is bolted to the floor, but it feels good to have another solid object between them.<p>

He is sitting at the edge of the cot when she enters and looks at her for long time without seeming to see her. She waits for him to say something about the monster or whatever else he thinks she brings with her and, almost predictably, says "Hello to both of you, too." His eyes travel to the chair in front of her.

She pulls her hand off of the metal like it has burned her, but she is satisfied. She will copy this memory, too, in order to see if this mention of another person in the room appears.

"Two visits in one week," he says, the corner of his mouth curling up in a sneer, "to what do I owe the pleasure?"

He looks almost like his old self then, and if he did not look so horrible, she might find it in herself to say something akin to 'shove off, Malfoy.' Instead, she says coldly, "Dawlish has a proposition."

His eyes are wild, then, roaming around the room like he is looking for someone else, and maybe he is. She thinks now that he might be looking for Dawlish as he watches the memories, or will watch the memories in the future, since Malfoy clearly knows that that is what will happen. His lips move and it is so subtle that she would have missed it had she not been looking for it. This is a message for Dawlish, she knows, and she will be sure to figure out what it is when she goes over this memory later.

He doesn't say anything to her, clearly waiting for her to continue. This annoys her, but she has a job to do, so she sighs once through her nose and then says, "Dawlish wants to know if you'll help them scout a location after making an unbreakable vow."

He tilts his head to one side, "and who will be the other half?"

She shrugs, "Dawlish, I expect, but you'll have to ask him. You'll do it, then?"

"Maybe I will and maybe I won't."

She rolls her eyes, "you don't have to be cryptic, you know."

"I am not being cryptic. Send him in." He shoos her away with a hand and she notices that the skin where his nails should be is less scabbed and the slivers of nail are even longer.

Hermione sets her feet and tilts up her chin, "How do you even know he's here?"

Malfoy gives her a smile like a shark, "I can smell him on you. Smell him everywhere. Send him in." He motioned again.

"I'm not your servant, Malfoy," she grinds out instead. "I'll call him, but only so that I can get out of here that much sooner." She transfers the ball to her left hand and the door opens. The aurors do not rush in this time and Dawlish sidles in, his hands in his pockets. He does not look afraid. In fact, he looks bored.

"Dawlish," Malfoy says smoothly, and his face is blank as ice. She hadn't realized that his face could be blanker than it was when he spoke with her, but seeing the vacant look on his face now gave her a new appreciation for the microexpressions she was sometimes able to catch when they were alone together. His eyes are wicked, though, and full of a malice that Hermione has not seen in them ever before.

"Malfoy." Is the curt reply. Dawlish does not look afraid.

Hermione thinks she might be caught between a predatory animal and a mountain and wonders if maybe she should not move out of the way.

"I have some questions for you, boy." and Dawlish is in front of her then, and sits in the metal chair, effectively blocking her from Malfoy's view. This seems like a protective gesture to her, and then it occurs to her that maybe Dawlish is trying to pull Malfoy's attention as far from Hermione as possible, almost like he doesn't want her to get hurt. This notion melts her heart towards Dawlish a bit.

She steps to the side so she can get a clear view of the conversation.

Malfoy stares back at Dawlish for a long time before saying, smoothly, "To whom am I to be chained?"

"Robards. You disappeared eight months ago. Our intelligence assumed you dead. How did you survive?"

"No."

This is, clearly, not the answer that Dawlish had expected. The familiar vein in his neck emerges. Hermione watches it pulse. "What work have you been carrying out for He Who Must Not Be Named in secret?"

"I will not be tethered to an auror."

"You will be tethered to whoever I say you will be tethered. You are a prisoner, boy."

Hermione recognizes the tone very well, and she cannot help the indignant huff that leaves her. Dawlish doesn't so much as look over at her, but Malfoy's eyes slide almost imperceptibly over to her for a fraction of an instant before returning to Dawlish. She understands what is going to happen, now, and only has to wait for it to unfold.

"This is not a discussion, Dawlish. These are my terms. I am perfectly capable of living out the rest of my life in this cell and there is no need for me to fight your wars." He looks bored. He glances over to the daily prophet folded beside him.

Hermione knows that this is a lie and she knows that Dawlish knows it, too, but Dawlish cannot contradict Malfoy without exposing the lie to Hermione, and suddenly she knows that Malfoy is the one in control of this conversation. For all his blustering and his commanding demeanor, Dawlish is here asking for Malfoy's help, and Malfoy is not making it easy for him to attain. The only thing she cannot figure out is where she fits into this.

"Bullstrode," Dawlish bites out.

"The auror or the fat little girl?"

Hermione winces at the cruelty in his voice. She has a soft spot for Mallory and therefore feels protective of Millicent, who Mallory is trying so hard to protect. She stands a little straighter and chews on her tongue to keep from speaking.

"Whichever," snarls Dawlish.

This answer bothers Hermione almost as much as Malfoy's original comment, but she wonders if maybe it is levied by Dawlish to protect Mallory. Allowing Malfoy to make the bond with a fellow Slytherin is a concession, she knows, but Dawlish will not give Malfoy emotional fodder if he can help it.

"No."

"Who, then?" Dawlish throws his hands into the air and shouts so loud that his voice echoes around the chamber.

Malfoy's smile is cold and confident. "Temper, Dawlish. It isn't good for your heart to be getting so worked up over such a silly little thing," his voice is quiet, especially in the wake of Dawlish's outburst, "You'll work yourself into an early grave with a temper like that. It would not due for your wife to be widowed so young and while she is expecting besides."

All of the color drains out of Dawlish's face at this and Hermione is surprised, too. She didn't even know that Dawlish was married.

"Your guards gossip like old women, Dawlish. Invest in better help if you want your secrets kept." The cold smile never leaves his face and his teeth are shining. _Grandmother, what big teeth you have!_ Hermione thinks to herself. _All the better to eat you with, my dear._

"Who will you accept, Malfoy?" Snarls Dawlish, who clearly does not take kindly to being threatened.

"I'm sure you know, Dawlish," Malfoy practically purrs. "It shouldn't be too hard to figure out,even for you, if you really try to think."

Hermione knows. Hermione figured out where this was going as soon as Malfoy's gaze on Dawlish wavered. "Me," she says, because she knows that neither of them would show enough of their hand to volunteer her. Neither wants to act like she is as important to their plans as she knows they think she is.

"Granger, leave." Demands Dawlish without looking at her. "Go wait in the hall."

"No," she says because she doesn't like orders any more than Malfoy does, and she folds her arms across her chest, "He won't accept anyone else, as you very well know, and so I'll do it."

"You don't even know what that means, Granger. Stop agreeing to things you don't understand."

Hermione thinks that this is a bit hypocritical of him, since it is because of him that she's in this mess in the first place, and his fault that she doesn't understand half of the reason for it. "I thought that's why you let me in here at all," she counters, "because I was a good mouthpiece. I don't see how this is any different."

"He's opposed," says Malfoy without looking at her, either, "because he thinks that you won't kill me, should the need arise."

Hermione doesn't know what to say to that.

"Clearly, you have done a poor job of explaining our relationship to him. But I can't say that I'm particularly surprised. No one's ever listened to you besides that Saviour of All Things Annoying and his boyfriend, Weasel."

Hermione glares at Malfoy. "I wouldn't expect any different coming from the likes of you, Malfoy, and who, pray has ever listened to you, besides those goons who followed you like ugly dogs?"

Dawlish is ignoring both of them. "You've planned this all along, haven't you, Malfoy? You sick bastard. That's why you've left her alive when you've killed everyone else we've sent in. So that you'd be bound to her and you'd convince her to set you free."

Malfoy and Hermione both look at Dawlish, appalled.

"I would never-" begins Hermione, her voice high with indignance, but Malfoy cuts her off.

"As lunatic as that sentiment is, I can guarantee that if you attempt to chain me to any other living being, I will break the vow myself and I will end all concern about this once and for all. You need me more alive than dead."

"Would you mind terribly _not_ _interrupting me, Malfoy?!"_

"I don't make deals with Death Eaters," snarls Dawlish.

"Then it is lucky you do not have to begin now," Malfoy replies coldly.

It is silent while Hermione ponders this and Dawlish thinks whatever it is that Dawlish is prone to thinking.

"You will be transported tomorrow to a different location. The spell will be placed and then you will assist my aurors. Should you fail in your duties, you will be terminated, and Granger won't have any say in that matter at all. I'll hold her down and Avada you myself if I have to."

* * *

><p>When they get back to Andromeda's. Dawlish sits down at the table and says, "Well, if you're going to drown me in questions, now's as good a time as any."<p>

She sits down opposite him, "I understand that the function of an unbreakable vow is continued control, but I fail to see how it actually works in this case."

Dawlish pulls his wand from his pocket and places them on the table between them. "Pretty straightforward, really. This," he waves his wand and a small blank stick figure pops into being on the table's surface, "is you. This," he waves his wand and a second figure appears, "is Malfoy. You'll make the vow by joining hands, naming the terms of agreement, and then a third party will bind you two." The two stick figures perform a small vow on the table and a tiny gold string shines between them for a moment.

"Yes," she says as patiently as she can, even though she hates it when people underestimate her intelligence like this, "I have read about unbreakable vows before. I fail to understand, though, precisely how it is going to be used in this case."

Dawlish waves his wand and the stick figures vanish. "We're going to make the vow that he must work for the good guys and, if given a direct order by you, he'll have to obey. And he can't kill any of us. Also, if you die, the vow transfers to me, or whoever I choose."

"So, essentially, I will have the power to order him to do anything and, if he doesn't do it, he'll die?"

"Yep."

"Will I have to be present for the ordering of him?" she asks.

"Course you will," is his gruff reply, "otherwise, he won't have to obey, but he still won't be able to betray us."

"That's barbaric!" a hand flies to her chest in outrage and disgust. "What if I order him to do something impossible or-"

"You won't. But I'll tell you right now, girl, if you let him go out of some crazed sense of compassion or misguided sense of humanity, you'll be responsible for more deaths than you can count."

"What do you mean?" she asks slowly.

"Malfoy didn't just kill his two cellmates, he also killed a guard we sent in polyjuiced as you, and he killed one of the aurors who was questioning him-"

"Torturing," corrected Hermione.

"_Questioning_, Granger." Dawlish snarls back, "he killed that guard. He wasn't even free when he did it- he was chained to a chair, but when the guard leaned near him to hear what he was whispering," Dawlish shakes his head, "Well, let's just say I know why he wanted the teeth now."

She takes a few calming breaths because she still has questions and arguing with Dawlish is always counterproductive. "Alright, do you have a copy of the oath you want to make?"

"Yeah. Why?"

"May I see it?" She holds out a hand expectantly.

Dawlish looks like he wants to argue with her about this. He pulls a roll of parchment from the pocket of his robes. "Don't mention Addie to the others."

"I am going to assume that Addie is your wife. If you don't want her mentioned, maybe Malfoy is right and you shouldn't have told the guards."

He shrugs, and doesn't hand over the parchment. "That my problem, not yours. I just don't want word getting out. The only one around here who knows is Mallory, and I'd like to keep it that way."

Instead of asking why Mallory is the only one who knows, which is what she really wants to ask, Hermione just says, "Fine," and Dawlish hands over the roll of parchement.

She unfurls it, and her eyes move rapidly across its surface. She grimmaces. "This won't do at all. Too many loopholes. I'll rewrite it tonight."

Dawlish chews the inside of his cheek to think about this. "Alright," he finally says, "Owl me a copy when you finish. I'll be here to take you in for the meeting at four in the morning, alright? I want to have this finished at you back here before anyone even notices you're gone. Fair?"

Hermione nods once. "Agreed."

"Before I go, I'll want that memory."

"I'll go take care of that now," she says, and stands, already reciting the duplication spell to herself in her head. "I've got vials in my room."

Dawlish nods and leans back in his chair. For the first time, he looks as tired as Lupin always does, and his face is drawn in innumerable lines of worry. "I'll be waiting right here."

* * *

><p><strong>Friday, November 28th.<strong>

The next morning, as early as was promised, Dawlish arrives to take her to different safe-house. It is a house she has never been to before, and when they apparate outside of it, she sees that it is small- much smaller than Andromeda's house and nestled among high trees.

They crunch through deep snow to get to the front door, which Dawlish wrenches open with a grunt.

They step immediately into a small kitchen, and the only source of light is gray morning light that is shining in streaks through filthy windows. Hermione knows it is a kitchen because there is an old-fashioned muggle stove in one corner, and it is covered in rust. They stand and silently wait, stamping the snow off their boots. Hermione is thankful that Dawlish mentioned that she needed to dress for cold weather. She casts a warming charm as quietly as she can.

They aren't waiting long. There is the crack of apparition from the yard and then two guards tramp inside, snow falling from their thick, black boots. They have between them the still form of Malfoy floating in the air. He is drenched in chains and unconscious, his head lolling to one side. They drop him unceremoniously to the floor and Hermione wonders if this ill-treatment is not to avenge the guard he murdered. His face is only inches from her boots and she sees now that the bruises on his face are gone and his nose is straight once again. He is still thin- much too thin- but he looks more like himself than Hermione has seen him before. She can't see his hands, which are bound behind him, but she knows that if she looks at them, there will be perfect, pale nails on each finger. They've erased everything they've done, like it never happened at all, and she wonders, then, if this isn't its own kind of torture- to have nothing but memories to prove what you've been through. There will be no battle scars for Malfoy. No proof even to himself what he endured.

She shudders.

"Wake him up," barks Dawlish, "he's got to do this willingly or it won't work."

One of the guards ennervates Malfoy, who opens his eyes like he's been awake the whole time, and he glances from side to side, his gaze finally tilting up at Hermione. She won't be the first to break eye contact and so she stares challenge into his dull gray eyes.

"Malfoy," Dawlish spits the name like it tastes bad, "Will you make the unbreakable vow?"

"Who is on the other end?" he asks smoothly, although his voice sounds hoarse and strained. Like there had been a boot on his throat until not too long ago.

"I am," Hermione hears herself saying and Malfoy's gaze never wavers from hers.

He nods.

"Right, then. Granger, you've got to be the one to touch him." She looks up and Dawlish is holding his wand pointed at Malfoy like he can think of a hundred things he would rather be doing with it.

The chains around Malfoys wrists vanish with a wave of Dawlish's wand, and he turns slightly on his side to pull them out from under himself. Carefully, she steps around Malfoy's prone body and takes his hand in hers. His fingers close ever so slightly around her palm. His wrists are an angry red from the chains.

"Position, Granger."

She doesn't even glance back at Dawlish, but squats down beside Malfoy. Even though she tries not to look at him while she speaks, she can feel his eyes on her and so she glares back at him in challenge.

"Malfoy," Dawlish snarls.

"I know what is expected of me," is the cool reply. "

Dawlish scowls. "One wrong move, boy, and you're dead."

"Riveting, Dawlish," drolls Malfoy, "Compelling as always, I see."

"Go on, Granger," Dawlish gives her shoulder a small squeeze, "Last warning, Malfoy."

Malfoy doesn't even glance up at Dawlish and instead keeps his eyes on Hermione as she begins to speak. Her wand is clenched so tightly in her left first that its base cuts into her palm. "Will you, Draco Malfoy, work exclusively for the Order of the Pheonix and its members, refrain from injuring or killing any order members or affiliates unnecessarily, obey all orders given by Dawlish or by me, Hermione Granger, or other hitherto unmentioned third parties that can be added at a later time by either myself or by Dawlish?" She says it all in one breath, the words practiced and precise.

Malfoy's long fingers tighten slightly around her fingers before he says, "I will."

Dawlish waves his wand between them, and a golden light shoots from its tip and wraps itself around Draco and Hermione's wrists, binding them together. The spell doesn't feel like anything around her hands, but the golden glow lights Malfoy's face, making him look more skeletal than usual.

As soon as the light is gone, Hermione drops Malfoy's hand unceremoniously. She stares at her wrist, and feels inexplicably dirty, like she just did something that she wasn't supposed to do at all in the first place. She wonders what Harry would say if he knew what she just did. She misses him terribly.

"Right. Let's test the connection."

Hermione glances at Dawlish, unsure of how to proceed.

"Stand over there," Dawlish points to the farthest corner from the one where Malfoy is propped, "And just give him some order."

She clenches her fist and thinks hard about what she should tell Malfoy to do. "Clap your hands," she says hesitantly.

Malfoy claps his hands together once. Perfunctorily.

"Very good, Granger," and Dawlish sounds pleased with the results, even though Hermione thinks that Malfoy would be just as likely to obey to make it seem like he has to follow orders, even if he doesn't.

"Right then," Dawlish turns back to the guards, "take Malfoy to the discussed location."

The guards nod, stun Malfoy, and vanish with a crack like a couple of whips.

"Where are they taking him?" Hermione asks Dawlish in the silence in the wake of their departure.

"We've got holding cells in a safehouse where he'll stay until we need him. And don't look at me like that, Granger. Compared to Azkaban, this is like a stay in the minister's quarters."

Dawlish apparates with her back to Andromeda's and leaves her there alone with her thoughts.

* * *

><p>That evening, Hermione is joined at the kitchen table by Ginny. Seamus, Dean and Lavender, who are staying at Andromeda's for the weekend, wander in fifteen minutes later and Hermione finds herself surrounded by loud and happy voices for the first time in months.<p>

They mostly talk about life at Hogwarts, because no one really seems to want to talk about what is happening now, or the fact that Seamus, Dean, and Lavender are only here so that they can attend Williamson's funeral on Sunday morning. Ginny and Dean argue about quidditch loudly, and everyone sings the school song as loud as they can. Andromeda comes in and casts a scathing look around when she says, "Some of us are trying to sleep." and then swirls back out of the kitchen in a flurry of dressing gown and anger.

Lavender looks sour, like she wants to say something, but before she can, Ginny says quietly, "Just leave it, ok? Ted's been missing for about a week now."

A hush falls over them for a long moment after that, but then Dean smiles to himelf and says, "Do you remember the DA?"

Lavender and Dean share shy smiles when they think no one else is looking and Hermione laughs until her sides ache when Ginny does a very convincing impression of Seamus during their time in the DA when they were paired up to practice stunning spells. She is the happiest she has been in months, if not longer, and she is able to forget about everything that has gone wrong- the monstrous curse and Malfoy and even the dull ache where Harry and Ron ought to be.


End file.
